More information about Interdisciplinary Programs :

A minimum of 120 credit hours is required for a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

Director: Amanda L. Beal

The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) major prepares students for law school, graduate school, and growing career areas such as management and consulting, public relations and communications, legal services, business, and public service. The blend of verbal, quantitative, and analytical skills that are accumulated in the disciplines within PPE are highly desired in graduate school and in the job market. When students major in PPE, they join the likes of David Cameron, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Wesley Clark, former primary Presidential candidate and retired General of the United States Navy; and Zanny Minton Beddoes, the Editor-in-Chief of the Economist magazine.

The Philosophy, Politics and Economics program includes an undergraduate major, an internship program, and opportunities for one-on-one research. The faculty in the PPE program also encourage students to study abroad and apply for national fellowships, helping them to find programs that fit their interests and gifts.

The Philosophy, Politics and Economics faculty provide an interdisciplinary experience for undergraduate students who are seeking a challenging and comprehensive education. In this program, students will learn ways of thinking through each disciplines approach and contribution and, in doing so; realize their ability to look at the world from numerous perspectives that are both complementary and competing. The PPE faculty are committed to providing students with skills in moral reasoning; skills of rigorous inquiry; a complex understanding of philosophical foundations, political institutions, collective behavior, economic theory and economic influences; and statistical competency.

The PPE major has 5 student learning goals:

1. Students will be able to identify and describe government structures, decision-making processes, the function of market forces, and larger issues regarding economic forces and development.
2. Students will be able to analyze and differentiate between philosophical and theoretical perspectives regarding moral reasoning and human behavior.
3. Students will be able to identify and evaluate the fundamental concepts and theories in philosophy, theology, political science, and economics, which pertain to the political-economic system, including the way that these concepts and theories are connected to one another.
4. Students will understand the critical role of culture and civil society in forming people in virtue and in stewarding the ideals by which people lead their lives, and of the complementary interactions between/roles of the economy, polity, and civil society.
5. Students will master the quantitative research methods techniques used in political science and economics, learning to access, construct, evaluate, and present statistical data in a clear and comprehensible manner.

The PPE major is a sequence of courses in the disciplines of philosophy, theology, political science, economics and mathematics. As any good PPE program should, this major not only asks students to take separate courses from the participating disciplines, but also to take no less than three interdisciplinary courses in PPE in which they will come to understand the complementary and contradictory assumptions in each of the disciplines (these courses are PPE 200 Justice Seminar (3)  , PPE 300 Liberalism (3)  , and PPE 498 Research & Analysis Seminar (3)  ).