I am interested in getting a PPE master’s, but they aren’t very common. I want to move to Prague after I graduate and the CEVRO Institute in Prague has a PPE master’s. However, the Institute isnt exactly “well-ranked.” In fact, it’s either unranked, or ranked shockinly low (10,092; 9,182; etc.). The program itself seems like something I would really enjoy, though (the professors, courses, concentrations, and so on). But the ranking is a little scary…
If this is the program I prefer and in the city I want to be in, should I go for it or is the ranking low enough to walk away and go somewhere else (whether it be a different degree in Prague or the same degree in another city)?
For what it’s worth: I’m double majoring in history and political science and double minoring in economics and philosophy & law. I want a master’s in PPE and a master’s in statistics.
Well, a couple of things:
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It kind of depends on what you want to do with the degree. If you just want the degree for your own edification, and it’s important for you to study exactly what you want to study exactly where you want, then sure, go for it. But if you want to try to use the PPE degree for career prospects it’s probably good for you to go to a university with a good reputation. That doesn’t mean you should use worldwide rankings, though; they’re not exactly useful within specific countries. You say you want to move to Prague; what is this university’s reputation in the Czech Republic like? That’s the important part. Also, if you move back to the U.S. in the future, what is the reputation like here? Most European universities are relatively unknown back here.
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Graduate study is very flexible. You can get a degree studying essentially PPE without getting a master’s explicitly called PPE. One option is to get a master’s in one of the component parts - political science, philosophy, or economics - and just take coursework in the other two. You could also go into an interdisciplinary area that involves study in all three of them, like a political economy master’s (Georgetown, Tufts, and JHU have one - and lots of universities in the UK as well). Or you could go for a more explicitly interdisciplinary field - like international/global studies, or the MAPPS program at Chicago - and take classes across all three fields. Or you could go for an MA in liberal arts/general studies and construct your own. Many top universities have an MALS program, although I will say that they are largely cash cows for the university (that doesn’t mean they are low-quality, just that they exist as money grabs).
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Why do you want two master’s degrees? You do know that there are programs that will allow you to combine study in the social sciences and in statistics, yes? First of all, there are lots of MA programs in political science and economics that are heavy on statistical science and applied/analytical methods (economics moreso, but quantitative political science is a pretty hot field).
Secondly, there are some MA programs that are specifically designed for people who are interested in applications of statistics to the social sciences, like the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences MA program at Columbia (and you can get a joint MIA at SIPA, if you like), the Masters in Computational Social Science at Chicago, the ScM in Social Analysis and Research at Brown, or the MA in Social Statistics at McGill. There are even many flexible MA programs in statistics that may allow you to focus or develop a concentration in the social sciences.
I mean, if you have scads of money to spend on graduate degrees then by all means…go for it. But graduate degrees are really intended to be a means to an end, to prepare you for a specific career or set of careers for which you need skills. If you want to do statistical analysis for a living, even for social scientists, an MA in statistics (or one of the other programs mentioned above) is really all you need. An MA in economics or political science from a well-respected university with the appropriate statistics/quantitative coursework would also likely be much more marketable than an MA in PPE, especially one from an unknown Czech university.