Throw in some stats and basic data analysis and I think you have a pretty good training regimen for people who want to go to Whitehall and Parliament
Before PPE would be bureaucrats and ministers studied Greek and Latin.
Some of them, I'm sure; but I think the highest density of Greats has always been in the House of Lords.
Those are kind of fundamentally different things, aren't they? A PPE degree is an undergraduate degree while a US Law degree is a graduate one. Law school doesn't require any specific undergraduate degree (it's well documented that the highest STEM and philosophy majors are some of the highest scoring on the LSAT). It'd be more applicable to compare what undergraduate degrees North American politicians have to the Oxford PPE curriculum.
As an anecdote, at my (US) undergrad school, people who were interested in politics majored in political science, international relations , or PPE (I don't know how the curriculum of this PPE degree compares with the Oxford one). Plenty of those people got law degrees and plenty didn't. PPE also attracted people who wanted to do something vaguely liberal arts but didn't want to specialize / commit too much.
Doesn't that make the implicit assumption that any degree is good preparation for government, though?
A good place to look at a non-political example of this phenomenon is submarine captains. A US submarine captain is by training a nuclear engineer first and foremost. It dominates the training and career path. In the Royal Navy, captains are more rounded and while they have plenty of training in that area, they have a more liberal education. That impacts leadership style and other things. Both courses are effective, just different.
Politics are similar. Your typical US politician is an attorney with a feeder degree in political science, history, etc. More MBAs too. Staffers usually have politically focused degrees as well.
Since 1945 Oxford:10 Cambridge:0
That's a wonderful epigram. Did you come up with that? I'd like to remember it and properly source it.
College is a prerequisite for professional degrees. Hacker News crowd notwithstanding, your career earning potential is reduced if you only have a secondary education.
Note that not all college degrees are equal. Obviously. Four-ish years of dedicated study changes your mind appreciably, which is the real objective. Also, finishing a degree signals your ability to function in a somewhat opaque bureaucracy, which means you'll be able to follow dumb rules and still get stuff done in a business organization.