Truth be told, there are very few core PECO units to begin with such that a political economy major ultimately consists of certain units drawn from each of politics and economics. This is easily confirmed by looking at the
handbook. My expectation is that some of the PECO courses will be retained, or filed under different codes, while the major itself is scrapped. If you want a thorough major in political economy which provides deep analysis of a broad range of issues from the perspective of heterodox schools of economics (i.e. those outside the neoliberal orthodox mainstream) then you are better off studying at USyd. Not only does UNSW not offer such a major, but USyd probably has one of the stronger political economic departments to be found in Australia.
For what it is worth, I took PECO2000 and PECO3000. The former dealt with a range of policy issues with a focus on understanding neoliberal perspectives and their potential flaws. The latter delved into a number of heterodox schools of political economy including Marxian, the work of Kalecki, Keynesian, Evolutionary and Institutional (Veblen, Schumpeter), Post-Keynesian. Ultimately the latter taught me to distrust economists, but I nonetheless found it to be a fantastic course which was theoretically very rigorous - it scraped down to the core methodological issues which plague economics (regarding [in]determinacy, probability, rationality, time, equilibrium, and so on) to an extent that I found satisfying as a student of philosophy. In other words, the course did not cut corners and force you to accept certain received teachings. Instead the plural focus invited one to actively question and propose approaches to fundamental problems in economics/policymaking which are commonly ignored in the mainstream teaching of economics. Also, Peter Kriesler was a great lecturer.
Take this course
(PECO3000) Also, check out the
society for heterodox economics at UNSW
