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The PPE program offers students the opportunity of a multidisciplinary immersion in the problems of action and reflection which shape the human world. Philosophy, politics, and economics share in common a foundational concern with the abundant and widely varying ideas of what is good for human beings and the challenges that arise from attempts at realizing and reconciling these different ideas of the good in practice. Each discipline develops this concern from a conceptually and historically distinct standpoint.

The study of philosophy teaches students to reflect on fundamental questions about nature, human experience, and our responsibility to others. By working with classic texts from the history of philosophy, and key problems within contemporary philosophy, students will catalogue their emerging philosophical commitments to cultivate a broad view of human experience and values, and to develop their facility with rational and critical engagement.

The study of economics consists of examining the decisions of participants in economic systems to discover regularities of behaviour in the expectation that through this better understanding society will be able to remedy undesirable results and achieve better ones. Such a study includes looking at the historical development of modern economies and the evolution of thinking about economic systems; examining intended and unintended outcomes of economic policies; and revealing the economic consequences of participation in trade, exchange, or employment relationships.

The study of politics is concerned with the nature and workings of power, state and government; the rights and duties of citizenship; the limits and possibilities of collective political action; and the social, economic, and cultural formations that shape the life of the political community. The scope of inquiry is local, national, and international; it includes the empirical analysis of individuals, groups, institutions and processes as well as the investigation of longstanding philosophical questions concerning human nature, freedom, democracy, and justice.

The PPE program brings these three areas of study together in one multidisciplinary program designed to balance prescriptive dimensions of the theoretical enterprise with descriptive ones that are grounded in empirical considerations, such that graduates of the program are broadly educated to consider complex contemporary concerns.