Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Philosophy, politics and economics, known widely as PPE, is one of the most intellectually ambitious and practically influential degree programmes in British higher education. It brings together three disciplines whose concerns are deeply interconnected: philosophy asks foundational questions about knowledge, ethics and rationality; politics examines how power is organised and contested in states and societies; economics analyses how resources are allocated through markets and institutions and how material welfare is produced and distributed. Together they provide a toolkit for thinking rigorously about how societies should be organised and how they actually are.

University College London offers this three-year full-time programme, drawing on three strong departments in a university with a distinctive tradition of engagement with public life and social progress. You will study formal logic, ethical theory and epistemology alongside political philosophy, comparative politics, international relations, microeconomics and macroeconomics, developing the analytical precision of philosophy, the empirical and institutional knowledge of politics and the formal modelling capabilities of economics simultaneously. UCL's location in London, at the centre of British political, financial and cultural life, enriches the applied context of the degree.

PPE trains a rare combination of analytical rigour and breadth of perspective. You will become comfortable reasoning formally, engaging with empirical evidence and constructing arguments about contested normative questions. These are capabilities at the heart of leadership, policy, law and public affairs.

Graduates are represented across the highest levels of British and international public life, including politics, government, finance, law, journalism and the civil service. The degree is also an excellent preparation for postgraduate study in any of its three component disciplines, for law conversion programmes, for MBA study and for the full range of careers in which intellectual credibility and analytical precision are valued.