Now you’ve done it! You annoyed me enough to go in search of actual data. It turns out philosophy majors do pretty well, both as preparation for fields like business and law, and in financial terms. dailynous.com/value-of-philosoph … nd-graphs/
Katherine
What started as joke is turning into something else.
Here is another along the same line that you posted. https://philosophyisagreatmajor.com/
My cousin has a PhD in philosophy, could not find any academic work in that field, she now teaches English in Korea.
Apparently some philosophers are disenchanted with professional philosophers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_careerism
I’m out.
I believe the link I posted specifically noted that there are many opportunities for people with philosophy degrees outside of academia.
Also, the link I posted discussed opportunities at the bachelor’s degree level, not for philosophy PhDs. In equating the two, I believe your cousin would note that you are engaging in a straw man fallacy.
Katherine
Indeed. It’s easy to be unaware, especially if you’ve not been to college, that the main benefit of college isn’t the academic knowledge of your chosen subject. The main benefit is a framework for critical thinking and the proven ability to learn new concepts and apply them.
My first post-studying job was on a sought after grad scheme in a business environment. My peers held degrees in subjects as diverse as law, economics, politics, science, history, english, philosophy, music and foreign languages. All were very adequately prepared for life in the corporate world. You would not have guessed which-degree-went-with-who from work conversations.
This is one risk of letting STEM-focused employers drive policy. For a lot of STEM jobs, the academic knowledge is important. Not necessarily the only or most important aspect, but someone who’s spent the last four years writing code is obviously going to be further up the learning curve for the technical aspects of software development jobs. And someone who’s spent the last four years writing code has at least had the opportunity to decide whether they want to continue doing it.
But that doesn’t mean that less technical skills/topics/majors are “a waste of time.”
Katherine
Sure. There are careers where specific subjects are either a boost or a necessity. A law degree helps if you want to be a lawyer. A medicine degree is essential if you want to be a doctor.
If we let that limited use case drive our view on the validity and value higher education we’ll be hurting all of ourselves.
… and as a complete aside, I for one would hate to have my life dictated by what I thought was interesting at age 17.
Knowledge is easy to carry…
Without a high degree of education in society there would be no jobs for the plumber or electrician because no one would have invented the things necessary for these professions today.
Preach. When I graduated my undergrad degree, everyone was doing computer science as a second major because it was “safe.” Then the dotcom bust and 2008 happened. The only people I know who still work in that field are those who didn’t do it because it was a job, they’re doing it because they have the learning and skills to convert that knowledge into something else. For instance, I don’t know any of the people in music with doctorates I graduated with who’re teaching college. One is a software developer, another does research, and so on.
I do think we (in the US) need a better system of vocational schools, but the systemic underfunding of education at all levels is another thread for another time.
ETA: my uncle (Ph.D in geostatistics, so hard science with a lot of math) said the classes that helped him the most in his doctorate were actually the liberal arts classes he took as an undergrad. He’d say that for every hour he spent crunching data, he spent another two writing about it.
I am not equating the two. They are not equal. She came from a family of tenured academics and actually wanted to work in her field as an academic. Didn’t happen.
But what really puzzles me is how a joke has morphed into what is starting become a contentious discussion.
Whoever made that image that I originally posted chose someone with a BA in Philosophy. It could have been an MA, or PhD and in other subjects like English, History, Classics, Anthropology, Archeology, Assyriology, etc.
BTW I have nothing against these subjects, but rather am a student of them. And though I don’t agree with him I respect some one like the late Dr. David Pingree (Brown U.) who started out as a mathematician, and then, following in the footsteps of Otto Neugebauer, became a historian of the exact sciences leading him to delve into ancient astronomy and astrology which required him to get into a variety of languages including those in Cuneiform, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Sanskrit. His translation and commentary of Yavanajataka is in all the foregoing languages minus Cuneiform. You would be hard pressed today to find someone with such an interdisciplinary approach. Unfortunately most of the programs he started are being shut down because of lack of funding. It is a fascinating subject but apparently not seen as valuable by university admins who increasingly view university as a business.
An older friend (89 to be exact) commented on this same joke thusly:
College is a wonderful place that gives you a lot of experience and fun
I recall this one from the old days: College, a 4 year party with a $20,000 cover charge.
These days $20,000 might only cover the first semester.
My majors: Aerospace engineering. Computer Science. The two sheepskins enabled me to pay my bills for decades, with an excellent ROI.
If you want a job prepare yourself for a job. If you want a multiple-thousands of dollars four-year party, you can have that. Your choice.
But it’s a shame more schools don’t encourage students to think about real-life afterwards.
I asked a friend of mine (who didn’t go to college) who is the CTO of a security start up about my nephew. This is part of the conversation.
He responded thusly:
You learned something useful in school that could support you. Many choose not only to party but also choose subjects with a much lower or zero ROI.
Which was my point.
The job market at that point also looked wildly different than it does today for new graduates. Silverdragon mentions “decades” – back when I was in college in the early 90s, the college-to-first job pipeline was already tailing off in the computer science field (or at least changing into “this school has internship partnerships with these companies, so that’s where you’re likely to get placed,” although it was still strong for other professions like engineering.
A LOT of that has changed in the interval, unless you’re in a path that requires a serious amount of secondary post-grad education (like law and medicine.)
You are absolutely right I am glad I am out of that.