PPE: the Oxford degree with a lot to answer for | Letters

I began studying economics at night school in Leeds in the 1950s and continued, at various institutions, as an external student of London University. Our courses were broadly, but not uncritically, Keynesian. We abjured fancy equations and sprinkled our essays with phrases like “a tendency to” and “pressure towards” this or that as a consequence of some other event. As a teacher I have tried to keep reasonably up to date, and learned in the early 70s, for example, to regard most monetarist nonsense as the fantasies of “Friedmaniacs”.

With this background, and aware of the influence on our leaders of Oxford’s PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) course, I have often wondered what on earth they taught them. Andy Beckett’s article (The degree that runs Britain, 23 February) gives the answer. PPE graduates are “intellectually flexible”. Or, to put it another way, they sway with the wind. And the winds of monetarism and arrogant attempts to make human behaviours as subject to mathematical predictions as the laws of physics, have captured economics academia for the past 40 years. Conservative, Labour and, to our eternal shame, Liberal Democrats have been equally culpable, as the damage done to the bottom 20% in this country, and to 80% of the population of Greece, so clearly demonstrates.

Those who wish to know what’s really going on in our economy, and how to put things right, could study my own humble blog keynesianliberal.blogspot.com, or the more authoritative writings of Will Hutton (Bristol) and the mainly macro blog of Simon Wren-Lewis (Cambridge).
Peter Wrigley
Birstall, West Yorkshire

• I used to believe that PPE ran Britain until I came up to study at Oxford. After milling around at socials held by the Oxford Union and all the political party societies, I found that a vast array of subjects were represented among the politicians, lawyers and hedge fund managers of tomorrow. Historians and classicists can be just as machiavellian as any PPEist.

I’d argue that the people who have damaged politics today are the following: a classicist from Balliol (Boris Johnson), an English student from Lady Margaret Hall (Michael Gove), and a linguist (Alastair Campbell), like myself. However, the reason for the linguist’s misdeeds must lie in the fact that he went to Cambridge.
Alexander Olive
Oxford

• In Thomas Hardy’s 1895 novel Jude the Obscure, the master of Biblioll College writes to the ambitious stonemason: “I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade.” But Blair’s Labour, keen on middle-class appeal, distanced itself, so there was no intake of working-class MPs, according to Geoff Evans on Newsnight. But, he also said, voters prefer politicians with a point of social contact with themselves. So another difficult inheritance for Jeremy Corbyn. It’s worth noting that PPE graduates have failed to run a UK economy to benefit everybody. Fortunately, John McDonnell has a union background, is working class and didn’t do PPE at Oxford.
David Murray
Wallington, Surrey

• Britain is run by PPE graduates. That is why they sign up for PPE. But the most popular optional courses when I retired – international relations in the era of the cold war; politics in the Middle East; politics in sub-Saharan Africa – appear to fall below the radar of ambitious political elites. As a PPE tutor between 1975 and 2010, I escaped teaching any of the numerous teachers listed, though Andrew Glyn and I once combined lectures on Marx’s Capital.
Gavin Williams
Oxford

• As a 1967 Balliol dropout from the PPE degree, I have a thought to add to Andy Beckett’s immense list of critiques. That course tended to repress anything to do with emotion. The approach to politics was hyper-rational with a materialist focus. How people felt and how that might influence political behaviour was totally absent. Imagination and creativity were despised as “arty-farty”. Hence the political emotions were terra incognita for the dons. As for the philosophy, the accent was strongly on logic (analytical philosophy, I mean). Nowadays, there is still a struggle to recognise that issues of meaning, purpose, individuation and the psyche constitute the political. As for me, I am now a Jungian psychoanalyst in practice who also writes about citizenship and the inner life. Reacting against something can often be quite creative. Oh, and I’m also a professor – dropping back in.
Andrew Samuels
University of Essex

• “The degree that runs Britain”. Surely there is an “I” missing in that headline.
Trevor Holland
Basildon, Essex

• It’s not PPE – Miliband, Balls, Jenkins – that’s the problem. It’s Oxford University – May, Truss, Johnson, Gove, and the rest.
Michael Rosenthal
Banbury, Oxfordshire

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters