A successful degree programme is celebrating its 20th birthday: Philosophy & Economics at the University of Bayreuth

The special thing about "P&E" is that young people can study central issues of society, economics, and politics together, and apply this to a wide variety of professional fields. Among the graduates (in the pficture: the team of the "Bayreuther Dialoge" Conference) are ECB economists, diplomats, journalists, European parliamentarians, party founders, and professors. This is an expression of what distinguishes the University of Bayreuth: Innovative capacity and interdisciplinarity. "We have always been pioneers when it comes to reacting to changing social and work conditions. Sport, Business & Law, Health Economics, and Philosophy & Economics are three outstanding examples," says University President Prof. Dr. Stefan Leible. He emphasises the importance of the degree programme for UBT:

"P&E" is also a result of the Bologna Process, in the course of which the traditional Diplom and Magister degree programmes were replaced by bachelor’s and master’s programmes. This gave universities great freedom to design entirely new, interdisciplinary degree programmes. With regard to later career opportunities, Prof. Dr. Rainer Hegselmann, as the driving force, developed the idea of a Philosophy & Economics programme at the University of Bayreuth at the end of the 1990s, with the support, in particular, of then University President Helmut Ruppert and through Prof. Dr. Bernhard Herz as the representative of Economics.

The first P&E students took up their studies in the winter semester of 2000.  Indeed, they were characterised by a willingness to take risks. Especially in the early years of the still young degree programme, which is unique in Germany, students had to explain not only to future employers, but frequently also to their parents the benefits they hoped to gain upon graduation, and how they intended to earn a living. Those times are now history. The degree programme now has over a thousand graduates who - in keeping with the idea behind the programme – are working successfully in a very broad spectrum of fields. P&E graduates can be found in companies, public authorities, governments, start-ups, NGOs, and in the European Parliament. And we have already come full circle:  Julian Fink, a P&E graduate from the very beginning, has been recruited as a professor.

The University will celebrate this birthday (two years late due to coronavirus) on July 4th 2022. More about the programme: https://www.pe.uni-bayreuth.de/de/index.html