Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Philosophy, politics, and economics, commonly known as PPE, is one of the most influential undergraduate degrees in the UK. It brings together three disciplines that between them cover the fundamental questions of how individuals reason and what values they should hold, how societies make collective decisions and exercise power, and how resources are allocated and economies function. The combination is not arbitrary: each discipline illuminates the others.

Political choices have economic consequences that economics helps us analyse. Economic thinking shapes political possibilities that political theory helps us evaluate. Both depend on philosophical assumptions about rationality, justice, and knowledge that philosophy makes explicit.

At the University of East Anglia, this three-year, full-time programme develops your understanding across all three disciplines, drawing on UEA's strong research culture in philosophy, political science, and economics. You will study foundational areas of each discipline, including moral and political philosophy, democratic theory and comparative politics, microeconomics and macroeconomics, and research methods across the social sciences. The programme allows increasing specialisation as it progresses, while maintaining the interdisciplinary perspective that makes PPE distinctive and valuable.

UEA's research strengths in applied ethics, political sociology, and development economics give the programme particular depth in areas where the three disciplines intersect most productively, including debates about global justice, environmental policy, and the political economy of inequality.

Graduates from PPE programmes enter careers in government and the civil service, politics, journalism, law, finance, consulting, international organisations, think tanks, and the charity sector. PPE is often described as a degree that prepares people for senior roles in public and private life, and graduates of UEA's programme are well placed for exactly that. Many also go on to postgraduate study in any of the three disciplines or in areas such as public policy or international relations.