The Irony of the PPE Degree

Anonymous

In O-Week of 2019, days into my first semester studying a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), I met a third year PPE student outside of Mooseheads who had only one piece of advice for me - “Drop it.” Like many other students at the ANU, I was dazzled by the prospect of studying a degree modelled from the famous programs offered at Cambridge and Oxford University. The programs page promised me that at the end of my degree, I’ll have “gained a passport to some of the world’s most promising careers.” Now, entering my third year of the program, I can say that the sparkle of PPE has dulled.

PPE is quite unique in that it is one of the least-flexible degrees offered at ANU. There are 10 mandatory courses, of which six are first year courses. Expect to learn about rational choice theory, game theory, and homo economicus in literally every single mandatory course you’ll take. Maybe if you’re lucky, your lecturers will have found a replacement for ‘lighthouses’ when giving examples of what public goods are. There are also three limited course lists from which students have to pick two courses from respectively to tick off the politics, economics and philosophy components.

These lists are lacklustre; there are 16 courses to pick from in the political science list, and having a look through the offerings gives me little hope: EURO2000 doesn’t exist, it didn’t exist when I started in 2019, and it’s still listed on the course page today. The same goes with POLS3034. POLS3039 has never run, neither has POLS2120. POLS2126 hasn’t been offered since 2020, and only ran once before that in 2019. POLS3029 hasn’t been offered since 2020 either. POLS3031 won’t be offered to students until 2022. The Washington D.C. Internship, a course that was marketed aggressively to me as a prospective student is extremely competitive, few students are admitted, and with COVID-19 it doesn’t seem like it’ll be running any time soon. Half of the courses from the politics list doesn’t run. Of the courses that do run, two are part of the mandatory game theory course list, so that effectively leaves you with 6 courses to choose from. Considering few of the remaining courses being run in semester one, you have to hope that your degree plan lets you even have a choice in picking a course that interests you, rather than having to enrol in the course because it is the only one running. What’s so frustrating though, is that so many more political science courses exist across the ANU; looking through the Bachelor of Political Science and Bachelor of Public Policy pages, over ten more courses are offered to students enrolled in those degrees. Why isn’t this an option for PPE students?

The economics list isn’t that much better either. If you’re a student who’s concurrently enrolled in a Commerce or Economics degree, you won’t be able to count almost a third of the courses towards your PPE degree. ECHI3008 hasn’t ever been run, ECHI3019 hasn’t been offered since 2019. The only list that seems to have been kept relatively up-todate is the philosophy list, but even that’s not amazing. PHIL2016 has never run, neither has PHIl2113, PHIL2124 or PHIL2101.

If you’re a prospective student, you won’t have any idea how enrolments or future offerings work. You’ll look at these lists and be really excited to have the opportunity to get to study a wide range of subjects. Once you get to university though, you’ll be bitterly disappointed that your choices are much more restricted than you originally thought. The courses that do run are often very rigorous and difficult, and frankly PPE students will generally not be equipped to take them. For example, ECON2125 - Optimisation for Economics and Financial Economics is offered to PPE students, but take a look at the prerequisites are you’ll see that you’ll have had to study ECON1101, and either ECON2015 (was never offered to PPE students, and doesn’t exist anymore), or EMET1001 (no longer a mandatory course for PPE students), or MATH1013, or MATH1113, or MATH1115.

It’s not the fault of lecturers that their courses no longer run, and it’s not their fault that course cuts will mean that more of these subjects will probably never run again in the future. It’s disappointing to see that one of ANU’s flagship degrees still has outdated information on the course page today, and that it’s marketed as a flexible multi-disciplinary degree when in reality it offers you little choice, disappointing outcomes and at least $30,000 in HECS debt.