70888798 Ppe Handbook 2011 2012 PDF

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PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

HANDBOOK 2011-12

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

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PPE HANDBOOK 2011-12 This Handbook is intended as a guide to students studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. It gives the regulations prescribing the content of the syllabus and the subjects for examination in both the Preliminary and the Final Examinations in PPE, descriptions of all the courses available and other information useful to undergraduates throughout their time at Oxford. This Handbook is revised annually and aims to be up-to-date in September for the next academic year. Comments and corrections should be addressed to the PPE Administrator Liz Griffith ([email protected]). The current issue is available online at: www.ppe.ox.ac.uk; for the latest course regulations, please be sure to check the web version.

* IMPORTANT *

1. Email: It is essential that you use email. It will be used to send you important information about your course. Please check your mail regularly, and do not exceed your user allocation, as this will prevent you from receiving new mail. The IT support staff in your college will set up an email account for you. 2. Lecture lists: Lecture lists are published before the start of each term. The most upto-date versions for each subject are available on the following web sites: Philosophy Politics Economics -

www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk www.politics.ox.ac.uk www.economics.ox.ac.uk

A PPE lecture list will also be available at www.ppe.ox.ac.uk. 3. Subject reading lists: These are available on the above websites and this is the easiest way to obtain them. Philosophy reading lists are also available at the Philosophy Library, and Politics reading lists are available in the Social Sciences Library. Course outlines and subject reading list for Economics can be obtained from the Economics web site.

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CONTENTS PART A - THE COURSE: 1. PPE

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Content: The PPE Degree Structure of the Course

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Choices: Choosing your options Theses Supervised Dissertations in Politics Changing your Course

6 6 7 9 9

Teaching and Learning: Tutors Tutorials, Classes and Collections Lectures Vacations

10 10 11 12 13

Examinations: Procedures PPE Prelims PPE Finals Preparing for Examinations Academic Integrity

13 13 14 15 17 18

2. Departments

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Philosophy Centre Department of Politics and International Relations Department of Economics Department of Sociology Department of Social Policy and Intervention

22 23 23 23 24

3. Libraries and Computing

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Libraries Computing IT Skills Data Protection

25 27 28 30

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PART B - STUDENT ISSUES: 4. Participation

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Consultation Student Feedback Undergraduate Joint Consultative Committees (UJCCs) Library Committees

35 35 36 36

5. Student Support

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Equal Opportunities Harassment Disability Complaints Procedures Illness and Personal Issues Scholarships, Prizes and Grants

37 37 37 38 38 39

6. The Future

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Taking your degree Proceeding to Further Study Careers

41 41 42

APPENDICES: Appendix A: Appendix B: Appendix C: Appendix D: Appendix E: Appendix F: Appendix G:

Outline of Papers in PPE PPE Examination Regulations 2011 Complaints and academic appeals Key contacts Oxford Web Addresses Code of conduct Advice on answering “gobbets” or commentary questions in Philosophy

43 74 74 77 79 82 83

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PART A - THE COURSE

1. PPE Content The PPE Degree PPE seeks to bring together some of the most important approaches to understanding the social and human world. It fosters intellectual capacities that you can apply across all three disciplines and develops skills that you will find useful for a wide range of careers and activities after graduation. The degree is constructed on the belief that the parallel study of related disciplines significantly enhances your understanding of each discipline, bringing added dimensions of understanding and perspective. The study of Philosophy develops analytical rigour and the ability to criticise and reason logically. It allows you to apply these skills to many contemporary and historical schools of philosophical thought and to questions concerning how we acquire knowledge and how we make ethical recommendations. The study of Politics gives you an understanding of the issues dividing societies and of the impact of political institutions on the form of social interest articulation and aggregation and on the character and effects of government policies. Among the big issues considered in Politics are why democracies emerge and may be consolidated or why states go to war or seek peace. The study of Economics aims to give you an understanding of the workings of contemporary economies. This includes the study of decisions of households, the behaviour of firms, and the functioning of markets under competition and monopoly, as well as the role of government policies in many areas. The course also looks at the determination of national income and employment, monetary institutions, inflation, the balance of payments and exchange rates, and considers issues in macroeconomic policy, focusing in part on the UK economy.

The Structure of the Course The PPE degree is divided into two parts. The first-year course is designed to give you a foundation in all three branches. In your second and third years, you may continue with all three or concentrate on just two. Whether or not your choice of subjects includes any of the specially designed bridge papers, such as Theory of Politics, Labour Economics, or Philosophy of Science and Social Science, your study in each subject will benefit from what you have learned and the skills you have acquired in other parts of the degree course. The syllabus is set by the University, which grants degrees and therefore examines for them; but most teaching, apart from lectures and some classes, is arranged by your college. The PPE syllabus prescribes the subjects for two University examinations: the Preliminary Examination for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE Prelims), normally taken at the end of your first year; and the Final Honour School (FHS) of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE Finals), normally taken at the end of your third year. Prelims consist of three subjects, Finals

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of eight. Each subject is normally examined in one three-hour paper, except that one subject in Finals may be a pre-submitted thesis, or a supervised dissertation in Politics. In Economics the final examination will include three shorter examinations for three core courses that will count as two subjects. (See details in Appendix A.) All syllabuses are published annually in the University’s Examination Regulations (the ‘Grey Book’), to which this handbook will frequently refer. Changes which are too late for the printed 'Grey Book' are included in the web version available at www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/. You received a copy of the undergraduate version of the Examination Regulations when you arrived; you will be notified of any subsequent changes of regulation which significantly affect you, and if there are changes of syllabus which might affect you adversely, they will not apply to you without your consent. PPE Prelims is a part of the ‘First Public Examination’. Graduates of other universities can apply through their colleges for Senior Status, which exempts them from taking the First Public Examination. Everyone else must pass it in some form - i.e. pass some Prelims or Mods before entering for a Final Honour School (or Pass School). Unless you are exempt, your college may require you to pass the First Public Examination before your fourth term from matriculating, as a condition of continuing with your course. If you take PPE Finals more than twelve terms after matriculating, you are ‘overstanding for honours’ and can receive only a pass degree (unless your First Public Examination was Moderations in Classics, which allows you fifteen terms, or you have been granted dispensation by the University).

Choices Choosing your options In PPE Prelims you must offer all the three papers prescribed, one each in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. In Philosophy the regulations require you to ‘show adequate knowledge in at least two sections’ out of the three into which the paper is divided: Logic, General Philosophy, and Moral Philosophy. In Politics, they require you to ‘show knowledge’ of two or three set countries and of political theory/ideology. The Economics paper has a range of questions covering Microeconomics and Macroeconomics some of which involve the application of mathematical techniques to economic problems. In none of these cases are you forbidden to range over the whole syllabus; and your tutors may expect you to study more than the examination minimum. But if they do not, then you have early choices to make within the Prelims syllabus, with the help of advice from your tutors. After Prelims the choices are greater. First you must decide whether to select two branches from Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, which will make you ‘bipartite’, or to keep going with the third as well, making you ‘tripartite’. This choice may be easy for you, if you were originally attracted to PPE for the sake of one or two of its branches and have not changed your priorities during your first year; or it may be difficult. If it is difficult, go by what interests you, provided that your tutors think you are suited to it; do not be too much affected by your marks in Prelims - which can differ greatly from Finals marks. A few subjects are available under more than one branch, and bipartite Politics and Economics candidates are allowed to include one Philosophy subject: similarly bipartite Philosophy and Economics candidates are allowed to include one Politics subjects: see the Examination Regulations. Further

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guidance on the choice of individual subjects within the three disciplines is given in Appendix A. (Students should be aware that they will have the opportunity to choose the Jurisprudence paper (Philosophy of Law) as an option in Philosophy. Please see Appendix A for more details.) Please note that not all options may be available to all students in any given year. You should also plan your lecture attendance because of inevitable lecture clashes, meaning you may need to attend one series in your second year and another in your third.

Theses One of your eight Finals subjects may be a thesis: see 199, 299 and 399 in the Honour School regulations in the Examination Regulations. A Philosophy thesis must be combined with at least three other subjects in Philosophy. Bipartite candidates who offer a Politics or Economics thesis must combine it with at least three other subjects in the same branch. If you propose to offer a thesis, the latest date for seeking approval of its topic is Friday of Fourth Week of the Michaelmas Term preceding the Finals examination, but the right time tostart working on it is much earlier. Begin planning no later than your penultimate Easter Vacation, and have a talk with a tutor no later than the beginning of Trinity Term. If your tutor thinks that your proposal is manageable, get initial suggestions for reading and follow them up, so that work can be done during the Long Vacation. Remember that tutors can only advise: the decision to offer a thesis is your own, and so is the choice of topic. So of course is the work; what makes a thesis worthwhile is that it is your own independent production. The Criteria for Assessment for PPE theses are as follows: •

cogency of analysis and argument

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accuracy and solidity in the backing up of the analysis and argument

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clarity of expression and presentation

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knowledge of how the topic fits into the existing work in its field

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awareness of relevant methodological issues

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respect for the scholarly conventions regarding contents pages, introductions, conclusions, chapters, notes, bibliographies, etc

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Application of appropriate theoretical or empirical models (applicable to Economics theses only)

Good undergraduate thesis topics can vary in character a great deal, but all have two things in common: they are focused, so as to answer a question, or set of questions, or advance an argument; and they are manageable, so that the time available is enough for your research and reflection on it, and 15,000 words is enough for an interesting treatment. Titles of past

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PPE theses are listed in the PPE Examiners’ Reports, which can be found on the PPE website (www.ppe.ox.ac.uk). If you decide to go ahead, submit your title and a 100-word outline, in accordance with the regulations for theses in Examination Regulations, for approval in Michaelmas Term. Thesis outlines in Politics should be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies, care of the Undergraduate Studies Administrator at the Department of Politics and International Relations. Thesis outlines for Economics should be sent to the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Economics, care of the Undergraduate Administrative Officer at the Department of Economics and theses outlines for Philosophy should be sent to the Undergraduate Studies Administrator at 10 Merton Street. Do not worry if your outline is not in the end very closely adhered to; the point of it is to make clear the general subject of the thesis and to show that you have some idea of how to go about tackling it. The regulations state that you may discuss with your tutor ‘the field of study, the sources available, and the method of presentation’. Before you start work, go over the plan of the whole thesis very carefully with your tutor. The plan must be yours, but the tutor can help you make sure it is clear, coherent and feasible. Get more advice on reading. But bear in mind that much of your reading will be discovered by yourself; so arrange to be in Oxford, or near a large library, for some weeks of the Long Vacation. Avoid letting your topic expand, and focus your reading on the issue you intend to write about; 15,000 words is the length of two articles, not a book. Your tutor ‘may also read and comment on a first draft’ (in the case of Philosophy, ‘on drafts’), and ‘the amount of assistance the tutor may give is equivalent to the teaching of a normal paper’; so tutorial sessions can be used for trying out first drafts of parts of the thesis. However, you have to write the finished version on your own; make sure you allow plenty of time – almost certainly more will be needed than you first anticipated. You must not exceed the limit of 15,000 words, excluding bibliography. That will probably, to your surprise, become a problem; but the exercise of pruning is a valuable one, encouraging clarity and precision which you should be aiming for in any case. Some general advice: (i) the examiners cannot read your mind; explain in your introduction just what you are going to do, and in what follows present the argument, step by step, in as sharp a focus as you can achieve: (ii) examiners will notice if you try to fudge issues or sweep difficulties aside; it is much better to be candid about them, and to show that you appreciate the force of counter-arguments; (iii) take grammar and spelling seriously, and always aim at a simple English style, avoiding convoluted sentences and preferring short words to long (there is sound advice which may be relevant in George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’, in his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, (1946), volume 4). Your bibliography should list all works to which you refer, plus any others you have used that bear on the final version. The style for references can be modelled on any book or periodical in your field. The rules for format and submission, and for change of title, are in the Examination Regulations. If for any reason you expect to submit your thesis late, consult your college Senior Tutor in good time. The Vice-Chancellor and Proctors may grant permission on payment of a latepresentation fee which they determine; but they may at the same time give permission to the

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examiners to reduce the mark on the thesis by up to one class. If permission is not sought, or is refused, the thesis may be rejected, or its mark may be reduced by up to one class. The Department of Politics and International Relations issues more detailed ‘Notes of Guidance’ on Politics theses, which you can find on the WebLearn site within the reading list for theses at https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/politics/teaching/redesign_und.

Supervised Dissertations in Politics If it is available in the appropriate year, one of your eight subjects may be a supervised dissertation in Politics, which is similar to a thesis except that there is a group of students, studying a common theme, all writing separate dissertations on it. The dissertation may not be combined with a thesis in any branch, or with fewer than three other politics subjects if you are a bipartite candidate. The regulations state that ‘with the approval of the Politics Subfaculty, members of staff willing to supervise a research topic shall through the Courses Manager of the Department of Politics and International Relations place on the noticeboard of the Department not later than Friday of Fourth Week of Hilary Term a short description of an area of Politics (including International Relations and Sociology) in which they have a special interest, a list of possible dissertation topics lying within that area, an introductory reading list, and a time and place at which they will meet those interested in writing a dissertation under their supervision for assessment in the following year’s [Final] examination…’ This means Hilary Term of your penultimate year. So if the idea appeals to you, it is best discussed with your tutor no later than the beginning of that term; if your interest arises too late for the Hilary Term meetings, you will need your tutor’s advice about the practicalities too. You do not need to seek formal approval for a dissertation topic (unlike a thesis). The rules on length, format and submission, late submission, and change of title, are the same as for theses: see the Examination Regulations. The Department of Politics and International Relations issues advice on supervised dissertations, contained within the Notes of Guidance for theses, which can be found athttps://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/socsci/politics/teaching/redesign_und.

Changing your course Sometimes the course you have chosen will not seem to be working out for you and you may wish to consider changing. Do not seek to change course at the first sign of difficulty. All courses that are worth anything bring the student up against obstacles, and your tutors will guide you past them. Seek the advice of your tutors at all times when in difficulty. Discuss problems also with your contemporaries; you are not in competition with them, and you should get into the habit of helping and being helped. But if, having thought the matter through, you wish to explore the possibility of changing, the first rule is, ‘Do not delay’ - you could be losing vital learning time. Talk to your current tutors or, if that is embarrassing, to your College Adviser or the Senior Tutor or any other Fellow whom you know.

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If you decide you really do want to change, there are three bodies which must approve: the University, your college, ...