Land Economy is a mystery. The Department building could be mistaken for a shopfront, and there’s a question mark next to the name. Multidisciplinary to the extreme, it combines law, economics, and the environment in one cross-cutting course. It has received mixed reactions from the outside world and has been described as “a discipline that is essentially only practised in Cambridge”.

In 1962, the Land Economy Tripos was born out of courses in rural and urban estate management. Estate management across these two streams covered such courses as English law, stock husbandry, and building construction and hygiene.

“I don’t think I know another degree that has more stigma attached”

Present-day land economists choose from topics including environmental economics and law, private law, land policy and development economics, and fundamentals of finance and investment. This follows a broad first year focused on the core disciplines and methodology of the subject.

This is the substance of the course, but perceptions vary. The land economists I spoke to report that common reactions include “the degree’s easy,” “it’s a farming degree,” and “what’s Land Economy?” Aaliyah, the Homerton subject representative for Land Economy: “I don’t think I know another degree that has more stigma attached.”

Girton student Mario says the course is “quite foreign, not well understood,” but once he explains his papers, it is perceived to be “relevant for the changing world around us, in particular due to that environmental consciousness”. Jesus student Shrey says that “[i]f anything, the misconception makes it more exciting to study”.

One glaring misconception is that Land Economy attracts a higher proportion of private school students. In 2024, 82.2% of the Land Economy intake was state-educated: this was the third-highest proportion of state school students across all subjects, after Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, and Education. In preceding years, the state school intake was just above or just below average. And – contrary to popular belief – Land Economy had one of the lowest acceptance rates in recent admissions cycles at 11.6% in 2024, and 11.3% in 2023.

What makes Land Economy unique? “We dibble and dabble in everything a little bit,” says second year Richard*. This means that Land Economy students need a “really, really, really malleable brain”. This is better for concrete application in the world of work: “It allows for me to build links between different areas of policy,” says Aaliyah. She points out that policy professionals need breadth of insight – it’s “far more practical” to get a sense of the bigger picture and see how issues interconnect.

The content of the course is described by students as well-geared to professional life, with practical instruction on topics like valuation and pricing an asset. According to a Graduate Outcomes Survey of 30 Land Economy students who graduated in 2021–2023: 45% were finance professionals, 25% were business, research and administrative professionals, and only 5% were in surveying, planning and similar roles. The degree is RICS-accredited, which means graduates are one step closer to membership of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

But Land Economy is not the only multidisciplinary degree in Cambridge. Others include Human, Social and Political Sciences, History and Modern Languages, and Psychological and Behavioural Sciences. Maybe the mystery of Land Economy is that its constituent subjects are not so obviously interlinked: the question is not what, but why.

“We dibble and dabble in everything a little bit”

“Even people in Land Economy don’t understand why we’re doing it like this, but it all makes sense in the end,” says subject rep Aaliyah. The historical evolution of the subject sheds some light on the question: at its outset, the degree was more heavily land-themed as “a logical academic advance from estate management”. Today, it represents the accumulated research and teaching interests of staff over the department’s 60-year history. Most subjects have a pre-defined scope; Professor Ian Hodge argues that Land Economy has been shaped by the faculty at Cambridge.

For similar reasons, Land Economy is an opaque name to outsiders, and in 2025, the department announced that the degree name (but not the department name) would be changed to “Environment, Law, and Economics”. This will take effect with the cohort matriculating in 2027/28. This is not the first time the department has considered a rebrand. In 1994, staff and students were balloted on the subject of a name change, with suggested alternatives including “Property Economics and Law,” “Land Resource Studies,” and “Environmental and Resource Management” – but no change was made. The new name is “a long time coming,” says Aaliyah. “I love it. I genuinely love it”.

“When you say it out loud, people are gonna know what you’re talking about,” says Richard. Other students take issue with the precedence of the environment. But Shrey reflects that the new name “could attract students who care more about sustainability and environmental policy, which will enrich supervisions a lot more”. He thinks that the changed name is truer to the course content, but he “will slightly miss the conversations that the old name sparked […] giving my own personal definition of the course was something I enjoyed”.

In response to criticisms, the Department of Land Economy has previously told Varsity that “environment refers not only to the natural environment but also the built and urban environments which are a central part of our work. This has been the tagline explaining our degree for a number of years as it is the best explanation of its content.”

What is Land Economy? The answer is elusive. Better put, there is more than one. The new name better captures the breadth of the degree, which is its principal appeal to students like Mario. He tells me that a student suited to Land Economy is “someone who can manage going from looking at a loan’s amortisation schedule in Excel to learning cases for tort law to critically evaluating policies to tackle regional inequalities, all in a single day at times”.

* Name changed upon request