What about having more than one major makes a student more appealing to graduate schools?
PhD programs: want to see advanced course work and undergraduate research relating to PhD major. Having more than one major may only help in specific situations.
Medical school: major agnostic.
Law school: not obvious how having more than one major would help.
Some LACs have extensive core or general education requirements. For example, consider Harvey Mudd and UNC Asheville.
An open curriculum or one with less restrictive general education requirements may allow a smaller school more flexibility, in that more restrictive general education requirements can force the school to offer more “service courses” frequently, reducing the flexibility of the faculty to offer other courses. That may be a motivation for a smaller school to have less restrictive general education requirements.
Well, any job that requires analytical skills, ability make clear well thought out arguments in writing or speech, etc. So, you know, anything that doesn’t require specific vocational/professional training (which of course a Philosophy major could get if s/he wanted to).
^^ I agree with OHMomof2. I attended a small liberal arts college and my classmates who majored in things like philosophy or history had no trouble getting jobs on Wall Street or getting into top law and medical schools. Employers with brains value employees with brains. Tomorrow’s jobs don’t exist yet today, so a liberal arts education will help you develop the thinking and communication skills that will enable you to succeed in any field.
I’d still like to know the kinds of specific jobs philosophy majors are getting out of school. Saying philosophy majors can get jobs that require analytical skills or clear communication is so vague as to be meaningless.
One Philosophy major I know upon graduation went to Officer Candidate School for the navy and ended up becoming a pilot for UPS when they got out of the service. In his case, as senior year was nearing a close, he looked to see what major he could make out of the classes he had taken, and he was the closest to graduating with a Philosophy major. I’m not sure if majors are really tied to jobs necessarily. As a physician, I rarely am posed a Chemistry question.
The development of strong logic skills in analytic philosophy programs (which would be almost all American philosophy departments) evidently preps them well for becoming a DBA.
" what kinds of good jobs can you get with a philosophy degree?"
“Well, any job that requires analytical skills, ability make clear well thought out arguments in writing or speech, etc. So, you know, anything that doesn’t require specific vocational/professional training (which of course a Philosophy major could get if s/he wanted to).”
Exactly, and an entry-level consulting job is one, philosophy, art history, economics majors would be able to get a good consulting job. Now two things with that - one is that it would be good to have some internship experience in an industry as consulting roles tend to be filled for roles on healthcare, fin services etc…And second you would need a MBA to move up in your career, you’d be limited without one.
^^Not specific to Philosophy or any other liberal arts major, but I’ve never understood why new grads right out of college are supposed to be qualified for consulting. How is it that experienced and educated business leaders are supposed to rely on consulting advice to help them run their business better,when the consulting firm has assigned the bulk of the project to some college grad with with little life experience, no business experience, and very little technical knowledge of anything?
I don’t get it. How is someone like that supposed to solve a business’s problems? Do consulting firms have some standardized consulting formula or tool that anyone can turn the crank on and come up with a reasonable answer? Those who can’t do teach. And those who can’t do or teach consult.
If you go through the list, from 2014 to 2016 some of the philosophy grads had very good placement. I would wager that the majority of these, particularly those employed by technology companies, had double majors in STEM or perhaps Economics. However, a large percentage had disappointing placement, like Sales Associate, Barista or Au Pair.
Remember that this is for Tufts, a top 30ish school in a large market. They should have great placement. Unfortunately, the philosophy major at a school ranked 50 to 200 would likely have much worse placement.
@Zinhead: “They should have great placement. Unfortunately, the philosophy major at a school ranked 50 to 200 would likely have much worse placement.”
Two assumptions here that I’m not sure are backed up by the facts.
I think too many people on CC place too big an emphasis on name/ranking. According to College Scorecard, Tufts (and UChicago) grads make about the same as GWU grads (and actually slightly less than Lafayette, Lehigh, and Bucknell grads).
As for “sales associate” being disappointing, no, it’s not glamorous, but learning to sell can be quite a useful skill in life.
My BA is in government with a concentration in political theory, but my MA is in philosophy. When I decided that, in fact, I didn’t want a PhD in philosophy, I found a job as a paralegal, then went to law school . I knew several grad students in the philosophy department who were former lawyers or law students. In law school, I knew a few former philosophy majors or grad students, including one who was ABD at Princeton in philosophy, then decided to go to law school and is now a professor at Harvard Law School. Lawyers and philosophers think similarly.
A friend from grad school, BA and MA in philosophy, has spent her professional life working in non-profits, running various things.
A friend’s boyfriend has a PhD in philosophy and does something I don’t understand having to do with the process of testing software.
Some people with liberal arts degrees, whether it’s in philosophy or biochemistry or Ancient Greek history, go on to do things directly related to their major. Many do not. It really is true that a liberal arts educational is about learning to think, to learn, to write, to analyze, etc.
As for the disappointing placements for some of the Tufts philosophy grads, well, yes, it’s very nice if you come out of college knowing what you want as a career and immediately finding a job that heads you in that direction. But I can think of worse things than being 22, still thinking about what you want to do and being a barista while you contemplate the question or think about grad school or save money so you can travel for a while. The real question is what are philosophy majors doing 10 or 20 years out of college and whether they feel well served by their education.
Basically, philosophy majors compete for jobs that want college graduates but are major-agnostic. They are probably better able to do many of these jobs compared to those in other majors (since they have practiced both humanities-type thinking skills and logical/analytical thinking skills), but getting the better jobs at the entry level can be difficult in general for all who are trying to get them, due to the large number of new college graduates looking for these jobs.
If you believe http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html , then philosophy graduates’ median entry-level pay tends to be on the low side, but their median mid-career pay is on the high side, with (along with math graduates) the highest growth from entry-level to mid-career pay. Perhaps it may be because they are underrated by employers and have trouble getting good entry-level jobs, since philosophy has few obvious major-specific applications in the job market, but tend to do well once they do get jobs with career growth potential.
At the mid-career level, philosophy graduates also have a relatively large range of pay, with the 90th percentile earning 4.73 times what the 10th percentile earns (compared to ratios of 1.87 for physician assistant, 2.55 for mechanical engineering, 2.75 for computer science, 3.66 for biology, 3.79 for business management, 3.98 for English, 4.02 for psychology, 4.15 for economics).
But then consulting hiring does depend more on coming from a target school, rather than one’s major, right?
As another example, Hamilton lists select positions for graduates, often for those who are established in their careers, and includes these for philosophy majors:
– Writer, Simon & Schuster
– Psychiatrist, SW Connecticut Mental Health
– Director & Counsel, Credit Suisse Securities
– U.S. Ambassador, Federal Republic of Germany
– Professor of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University
– Senior Scientist, GE Global Research
– Director, U.S. Department of Transportation
– Vice President, Goldman Sachs
– Principal Law Clerk, New York State Supreme Court
– Lieutenant, U.S. Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Some of these career paths would have required advanced degrees, others not necessarily.