Forget STEM - it's PPE that runs the world!

[piggys]

For all those sharp elbowed helicopter parents driving their sons and daughters into STEM at university - the world is run, according to today's Guardian, by Oxford PPE graduates.

I studied humanities so therefore am incapable of copying/linking the article by Andy Beckett (although I can tell you everything you need to know about prose and poetry analysis and help with ELNAT and ELAT etc ), so if someone could do that for me I would be grateful.

Any thoughts?

Link added for you - Moderator: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... es-britain" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Warks mum]

Of course that always assumes you believe politicians rule the world

[kenyancowgirl]

Warks mum....Is Trump a politician, then?....oh...no...wait.....! Drat!! If only he was even that......!!!

[quasimodo]

There was also this analysis in the guardian about the contents of the degree in 2013.I haven't checked to see if it has changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... ree-oxford" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[piggys]

Thankyou mods

[Catseye]

Indeed, what we need for the UK plc is more civil servants, politicians and journalists

[loobylou]

This is what my 12 yo ds wants to do

[Amber]

This is what my 12 yo ds wants to do

One of mine fancied it too until he realised he needed A level maths. He concluded that the P and the P looked great but the E less so.

[loobylou]

This is what my 12 yo ds wants to do

One of mine fancied it too until he realised he needed A level maths. He concluded that the P and the P looked great but the E less so.

Ooh yay, he doesn't want to do maths! Thank you Amber!! (it's the p and p that he likes the thought of too).

[Catseye]

Here is Prof Brain Cox's opinion of PPE-and I concur.

OXFORD should rewrite the syllabus of its elite politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) degree, which produces many top politicians and civil servants, to make students learn about science, Professor Brian Cox has said.

He believes the course, whose graduates include David Cameron and Ed Miliband, risks failing to give students the intellectual skills to make decisions in a world increasingly driven by science and data rather than ancient Greek philosophy.

Oxford’s PPE course was set up in the 1920s to train senior policy makers and has been so successful that its graduates are found throughout the upper echelons of Britain’s political parties and the civil service. They also include the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the environment secretary, Elizabeth Truss, and the environment minister, Rory Stewart.

However, Cox believes politicians, especially those in science-based areas such as health or the environment, need to understand far more about scientific methods and how to use data and evidence.

“Aspiring politicians and policy makers should not have an education that largely ignores science,” he said. “It would be far better for the country if that course [PPE] obliged students to study science. Classicists and historians may shudder at this idea, but these students should be taught scientific methods.

“They should be made to go into the laboratory, do experiments to collect data and then draw evidence-based conclusions. It doesn’t matter which science — it’s understanding the method that matters.”

He was speaking in his role as professor for public engagement in science at the Royal Society in advance of the organisation’s Winton prize for science books, which he hosts this week. The awards — and his comments — are designed to reinforce the society’s view that science is now so important it should be seen as being at the heart of British culture.

Oxford’s PPE course is hugely oversubscribed: about 1,600 people apply for 240 places a year. Students take courses ranging from political theory to post-Kantian philosophy and Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics.