Philosophy, Politics and Economics with a Placement Year

Philosophy, politics, and economics is one of the most intellectually ambitious undergraduate combinations available, bringing three complementary analytical toolkits to bear on the most fundamental questions about how societies are organised and how they might be improved. Philosophy asks how we can know anything, what grounds moral judgements, and what we should value; politics examines how communities make collective decisions and how power is distributed and exercised; economics analyses how resources are produced, distributed, and consumed, and what incentive structures shape behaviour. This four-year full-time degree at the University of East Anglia includes a placement year, giving you extended professional experience alongside your academic formation.

You will develop skills in critical reasoning, formal analysis, and empirical inquiry across all three disciplines, learning to approach complex contemporary problems, including inequality, democratic reform, climate policy, and global governance, with a set of tools that no single discipline could provide alone. The placement year takes your learning into a professional context, whether in business, policy, public service, or another sector, giving you the practical experience and contextual understanding that makes your academic formation more robust and more directly applicable to working life.

A typical entry tariff of 120 UCAS points reflects an accessible admissions standard for an intellectually demanding programme. PPE graduates from UEA pursue careers in government, finance, management consulting, law, journalism, think tanks, international organisations, the civil service, and non-governmental organisations, as well as in a wide range of other roles where analytical breadth and the ability to reason carefully about complex social questions are valued. Many continue to postgraduate study in economics, politics, philosophy, or public policy.