Philosophy Politics & EconomicsPPE's curriculum is designed to foster an interdisciplinary perspective. A good PPE student should be able to look at the world through different disciplinary windows - including economics, psychology, and ethics - so that they can better understand how political and economic systems shape human welfare. In other words, PPE helps us model problems that arise when we interact with each other and then evaluate the tradeoffs among the economically/politically feasible and morally desirable set of solutions.
For which careers and graduate programs Penn PPE students pursue after graduation, see this overview from Career Services which is updated every year (select the year you are interested in and keyword search "Philosophy, Politics, & Economics" in the document).
Arc of the major
The progression of courses generally begins with common foundations, proceeds through Core PPE classes, and culminates with courses in the student's elected thematic concentration. Students finish with a Capstone seminar.
Stage 1: What disciplines are we connecting?
At the first stage in the major, students take a variety of courses in the allied disciplines to develop a foundational understanding of each. These courses constitute the major's Common Foundation courses (7 credits). In addition, students must complete either the formal reasoning or quantitative data analysis foundational approaches in the college, in order to fulfill PPE's Rigorous Reasoning Pre-requirement.
Stage 2: How are we connecting them?
The PPE Core courses (3 credits) serve an integrative role after the breadth in the common foundations emphasizing PPE's coherent interdisciplinary perspective. These PPE-specific interdisciplinary courses enhance a student's ability to look at a problem through several possible analytic lenses.
Stage 3: Developing a focus
Building on the Foundations and Core, students develop a coherent Thematic Concentration (5 credits). Here students fashion a course of study, choosing five interdisciplinary, complimentary courses developing a concentration within a theme to study. Students are encouraged to do research or take additional advanced interdisciplinary seminars as appropriate when developing the theme.
Advanced Interdisciplinary Seminars: PPE 4500-4950 (1 credit) Students may take more than one Advanced Interdisciplinary Seminar and count the additional courses as electives in their thematic concentration.