This particular course has produced a significant number of notable graduates such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and former State Counsellor of Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Princess Haya bint Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan; Christopher Hitchens, the British–American author and journalist;[1][2] Will Self, British author and journalist;[3][4] Oscar-winning writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Michael Dummett, Gareth Evans, Philippa Foot, Christopher Peacocke, Gilbert Ryle, and Peter Strawson, philosophers; Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, David Cameron, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak,[5] Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom; Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Foot, William Hague and Ed Miliband, former Leaders of the Opposition; former Prime Ministers of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan; and Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Tony Abbott, former Prime Ministers of Australia.
[11][failed verification] Harvard University began offering a similar degree in Social Studies in 1960, which combines politics, philosophy, and economics with history and sociology.
[7] During the 1960s some students started to critique the course from a left-wing perspective, culminating in the publication of a pamphlet, The Poverty of PPE, in 1968, written by Trevor Pateman, who argued that it "gives no training in scholarship, only refining to a high degree of perfection the ability to write short dilettantish essays on the basis of very little knowledge: ideal training for the social engineer".
The pamphlet advocated incorporating the study of sociology, anthropology and art, and to take on the aim of "assist(ing) the radicalisation and mobilisation of political opinion outside the university".
In response, some minor changes were made, with influential leftist writers such as Frantz Fanon and Régis Debray being added to politics reading lists, but the core of the programme remained the same.
In this regard, the study of philosophy is considered important because it both equips students with meta-tools such as the ability to reason rigorously and logically, and facilitates ethical reflection.
[26] Oxford PPE graduate Nick Cohen and former tutor Iain McLean consider the course's breadth important to its appeal, especially "because British society values generalists over specialists".
In the current economic system, he bemoans the unavoidable inequalities besetting admissions and thereby enviable recruitment prospects of successful graduates.
He also stated that the structure of the course gave it a centrist bias, due to the range of material covered: "...most students think, mistakenly, that the only way to do it justice is to take a centre position".