Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Good Career Paths for Undergraduate Philosophy Majors?

Brian Leiter

A young philosopher writes:

I will be leading a Q&A session for our undergraduate philosophy majors who have professed interest in going to graduate school in philosophy.  I feel that I must make them aware of the currently dismal job market in philosophy (which I am well acquainted with, having just gotten my PhD from [a top program] and having seen first hand how hard it is for even [for graduates of top programs] to land TT jobs right now).

I imagine that after hearing this, some students will decide against philosophy graduate school, and will ask me about good alternative career paths for philosophy majors.  Unfortunately, this is something that I know absolutely nothing about. 

I have searched your blog and have found information about alternative career paths for PhD students; advice for undergraduates applying to PhD programs in philosophy; etc; but as far as I can tell nothing on this specific question:

What are good career paths for undergraduate philosophy majors, alternative to philosophy graduate school?

I'll open this for comments and links from readers (including, e.g., links to departmental webpages that address this topic or amalgamate other links).  I'll just comment on one frequent road that philosophy majors go:  law school.   Training in philosophy serves most students quite well in law school, since they arrive used to the idea that in reading a text you are supposed to engage it dialectically, to ask whether its arguments are any good, and to consider counter-arguments.  On the other hand, one should have no illusions about how studying law is different than studying philosophy:  first, because arguments from authority are not fallacious in law, but instead are required; and second, the authorities constrain the parameters of any argument, so often the most intriguing line of philosophical argument will be foreclosed by a statute or binding precedent that settles the matter.  That being said, a lot of law school emphasizes the dialectical and discursive skills that are also emphasized in the study of philosophy, and many substantive areas of law (criminal law, torts, evidence, intellectual property) raise recognizably philosophical questions.   On the other hand, work as a lawyer can vary quite a bit–while, for example, appellate litigation requires many of those skills, trial work demands theatrical and rhetorical skill.  And many lawyers almost never go to court at all:  they negotiate contracts, they solve regulatory problems for hospitals, they analyze the tax implications of a propose business merger, and so on.

Other ideas from readers on "good career paths for undergraduate philosophy majors"?

Leave a Reply to Michael Rosen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

36 responses to “Good Career Paths for Undergraduate Philosophy Majors?”

  1. andrew

    completely anecdotal: writing-heavy careers, such as journalism, publishing, copy-editing, etc.

    Reply
  2. Rob Tempio

    This undergraduate philosophy major and erstwhile graduate student (one year in a PhD program) ended up in academic book publishing. It's not an easy field to get into either (I was quite lucky to get into it and, all the more lucky to end up on the philosophy side of it!). Publishing presented a nice alternative to grad school in that it keeps me academically engaged, satisfies my intellectual curiosity, and allows me to do indulge my love of books and reading. I also get to talk to and work with some pretty smart people on a daily basis. I probably never had the confidence or ability to write a book myself anyway, but I am confident of my abilities to know who should be writing them. Book publishing is changing at a rapid pace in the digital age, but it will survive and I can heartily recommend to it for undergraduates looking for alternatives.

    Reply
  3. AC

    @Rob Tempio: Could you perhaps say something about how one should go about getting into the field of academic book publishing?

    Reply
  4. Zach

    I graduated in 2010 with an undergraduate degree in philosophy. My focus was on philosophical logics. I was able to get a job working with databases, and am now very proficient in SQL, as well as a few other basic languages.

    Philosophy majors who take a logic-oriented approach may find programming a natural home, as did I.

    Reply
  5. Mike

    Philosophy undergraduates who are considering law school should also consider contract management. It is a growing discipline and doesn't require 3 more years of school (with the associated increase in school debt, for most people). Although I worked as a corporate attorney for 8 years, I am now a contract manager doing similar kinds of work– drafting and negotiating contracts, etc. But I now have a very reasonable work/life balance–allowing me plenty of time to read philosophy, which I rarely found the time to do while I practiced law.

    Reply
  6. Sandy Goldberg

    We have a very similar event to the one described by your reader, Brian, and we have begun to assemble a list of the post-college careers that are pursued by our undergrads on graduation. We have found that there is a greater variety of things that have been done, and done well, for which an undergraduate degree in philosophy provides an excellent foundation. The initial collection of stories we have gathered here at Northwestern (and we will gather more) can be found here: http://www.philosophy.northwestern.edu/alumni/index.html . This gives a nice sense of the variety of career paths our majors have pursued.

    Reply
  7. C. Sistare

    I think that at this particular point in our economic times, law school is not a 'go-to' choice. It costs a great deal, and there are more J.D.s out there than jobs. If one does a law program at night while working in some other field, the degree can eventually be quite helpful.

    Software jobs of many kinds are a reasonable alternative for logic-trained folks. My spouse moved from a PhD. in philosophy of language into a caeer in software, ending up doing work he cannot explain to those of us out of the loop. A lucrative loop, I should add.

    BL COMMENT: Top law schools are still good bets, in terms of professional prospects. But students are well-advised to investigate job placement carefully. The best bet is always to find out which legal employers actually interview on campus–the differences between schools on this score, especially when you take into account their size, is often very revealing.

    Reply
  8. David Auerbach

    Agree with Zach. The more analytic aspects of philosophy and the algorithmic side of software engineering (and other engineering disciplines) share similar methodologies, and even personalities. I would go further than Zach and say that even non-logic-oriented philosophers may find computer science quite compatible with their general thinking processes. Semantics, probability, and ontologies come up frequently in software engineering as well.

    I highly recommend taking intermediate-level computer science courses as an undergrad (or even as a graduate student) as a complement to philosophical work. Having that theoretical knowledge, as well as practical knowledge of C or Java, prior to graduation will greatly expand opportunities later.

    Rohit Parikh and Samir Chopra (both at CUNY) are examples of people who are working in academia in between the two fields of phil and CS, though CS certainly gives more of a fallback option as well outside academia.

    As Larry Lessig and James Grimmelmann, among others, can tell you, the overlap of CS with law exists as well.

    Reply
  9. Jonathan Schwedel

    Law school and graduate school are the obvious paths. I considered both, but the climate is very difficult right now. Philosophy undergrads are in the uniquely challenging position in that the discipline is one of the most rigorous in the humanities canon, but the general public is in almost complete ignorance of it. The clear-thinking and analytical skills gained from studying philosophy have broad practical applicability, but try telling that a human resources manager for the fiftieth time in a row to no avail.

    Personally, I had a rough go of it for a while given the economy, but now have a very good job working as a social science researcher for a software company. It is actually a close fit to my undergraduate education, being able to work with extremely smart people in a colloquial environment. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of similar opportunities out there, or at least they are not well publicized. I have been trying to do what can to give back in trying to recruit philosophy students for our internship program over the summer.

    Reply
  10. Jack Samuel

    I suspect that this point is of little practical use to anyone, but in between undergrad and grad school I worked a little bit in production, mostly on movies and advertising. I was shocked to see not only how many people with a philosophy background where working in that industry (being a PA is one of those jobs that pretty much just requires being able-bodied, quick-thinking, and good at problem-solving), but how many successful people at the top of the industry had majored in philosophy, including a producer and agent both making twice as much as the average full professor, both under 40.

    Maybe the upshot of this anecdotal experience (if there is one) is that philosophy majors are well-trained to do just about anything with an intellectual component where clear thinking is valued. At least, that's what I've been telling the freshman I TA for…

    Reply
  11. Chris D

    Mike: Where can one learn more about contract management? Where should one start? Are there certification or degree programs?

    Reply
  12. M.B. Willard

    A number of my friends who were philosophy majors ended up in business and IT. Before I went back to graduate school I worked for a consulting firm. Some, but not a majority, picked up another degree (MBA, MS) first.

    I encourage my majors who aren't thinking of graduate school to take a couple of practical courses (programming, statistics, &c) to help them get their foot in the door at their first job, but I also remind them that it's a mistake to think of most undergraduate majors (especially, but not exclusively, in the humanities) as job training for a particular entry-level job. Most Americans will switch careers a number of times in their lifetimes, and the value of an employee who can think critically should not be overlooked. (Here's Forbes magazine making a similar point, with some empirical data: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/college-degree-pay-careers-leadership-salaries.html)

    Reply
  13. Mike

    Chris D:

    A good place to start learning more about contract management is the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) webpage: http://www.ncmahq.org. NCMA has its own certification programs. Additionally, many universities offer contract management certificate programs– George Washington, Villanova, St. Louis U., etc. The certificate programs are typically only a few courses but still cost several thousand dollars, so of course you should still do your homework and ask about career prospects and job placement services that they offer. Predictably, most of the government contract management jobs are in the DC area (and the US Government is really trying to attract new talent), but there are increasing numbers of jobs in healthcare, etc. outside the US area.
    While I'm on a career advice soapbox–I would advise undergraduate philosophy majors to spend their summers wisely by pursuing internships related to careers which they might find interesting–counseling, forestry, whatever…
    Good luck.

    Reply
  14. Mike

    Clarification to last post: There are increasing numbers of contract management jobs outside the DC area, not the US area (the perils of posting when my children clearly need to be put to bed)

    Reply
  15. Benjamin Hale

    Undergrad majors should also seriously consider a public policy degree. I got my MPA before I went to get my PhD in philosophy, and it was one of the smartest career moves I made. Not only did I feel throughout grad school that I always had a fallback career should things not work out with philosophy, but I believe it ultimately positioned me well to land on my feet within the academy.

    Though the study of "policy" can actually cover a lot of territory, policy schools tend to emphasize the legislative or the administrative, as opposed to the judicial, aspects of public policy.

    If you're interested in the fine details of law or code, then maybe law school is for you. But if you're interested in the wider-scope generalized legislative positions commonly taken by those in either chamber of the legislature — questions related to taxation, health care, welfare, environment, agriculture, etc. — then a policy degree may be up your alley. The critical thinking that is promoted and cultivated in philosophy majors is nicely reflected, and finds a fair bit of space to grow, in policy programs.

    Programs in public policy vary from emphases on legislation to emphases on administration, so as with many things, it is wise to research a program closely before applying.

    Reply
  16. Raj N. Patel

    I graduated in 2010 with an undergraduate degree in philosophy. I've received a tentative offer (contingent on a background check) at the Department of Homeland Security doing stuff related to privacy; my 'cover letter' for the job was simply a writing sample that was part of a larger paper I wrote for an environmental philosophy class that eventually got accepted for publication in an undergraduate economic journal.

    It may be because I graduated from a school in DC, but I've noticed that many government agencies have been exceptionally quick to respond to my resume. In fact, the DHS basically gave me the tentative offer at the interview, within a week of initial contact.

    Reply
  17. Dirk Baltzly — Monash Uni, Melbourne

    A number of our graduates — BA(Hons), MA and PhD — have gone on to successful careers in the Australian public service. My impression is that the word is out in the both the state and Commonwealth public service that philosophy graduates have outstanding communications and analytical skills.

    I know that the US does not have the same system for hiring civil service jobs. And in any case, one side of politics has branded government workers Public Enemy Number 1. Nonetheless, there are very worthwhile functions that need to be performed by public servants and philosophy graduates are well-equipped to do this necessary work. Perhaps after all state and federal government departments have been privatised (and thus made right and holy) your graduates might consider careers there.

    Reply
  18. Michael Rosen

    One of the benefits of having been teaching for a long time is to be able to see where one’s students end up twenty or thirty years later. And – no surprise here, I think – the fact is that they end up all over the place, sometimes in places that you’d expect but also in others that you might not (acting, the police?). In general, though, it’s true that the two obvious destinations – law and IT – are heavily populated, as are journalism, politics and public administration.

    If you’re a philosophy graduate (or someone advising philosophy graduates) the phrase to remember is “analytical approach to problem-solving”. It’s an accurate description of the skills that you acquire by studying philosophy and one that goes a long way with recruiters. As others have pointed out, though, it’s greatly strengthened if you can point to other, complementary skills – particularly a reasonable level of numeracy.

    And employers also look for “communication skills”. If you’re the sort of person who responds to questions by screwing their face into a grimace and going into a trance, beware – that’s the kind of behaviour that might get you the reputation of being “deep” among your philosophy peers but it will immediately put a red flag against your name with most employers. The happy truth, though, is that, overall, successful philosophy students are a lot more employable than the philistines who want everyone to do “business studies” let on.

    (What I have written is based on U.K.. experience, but I’d be surprised if things were very different in the U.S.)

    Reply
  19. Nick Drew

    Graduated (Oxford) in 1977 and have pursued a career in commerce (energy industry) ever since, as a deal-maker rather than lawyer or accountant. Have encountered no end of "recognizably philosophical questions" in my work.

    Some of these arise from drafting and negotiating contracts, as mentioned by Mike above (much of the best drafting comes from negotiators who are not lawyers, IMHO).

    As stated by Brian, arguments from authority abound – and not just in terms of legal precedent; custom & practice can be major constraints as well – but this is actually half the fun. As a deal-maker, one seeks to be very clear where the 'fallacy' lies, and circumvent it with a combination of clear reasoning (not always to be shared !) and creativity to achieve the aim. This frequently engages the philosophical mindset.

    Throw in the complexities of dealing productively across some very different cultures around the globe and there is plenty to stimulate the philosophical juices.

    Reply
  20. Nicolas Espinoza

    My own story is perhaps not relevant in a direct way but may be so indirectly. Having completed my PhD in philosophy here in Sweden (so this may not be relevant to undergraduates in the US) I took a position as an operations analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency. This is a research agency which employes about a thousand people, mostly phds, devoted to "making the world a safer place" (I was sceptical of this at first but it turned out to be true – a lot of focus was on mine detection, civil contingency planning, risk analysis, etc). Initially my work was to be focused on risk analysis and decision representation/modeling since I had a background in decision theory. However, only some of my work turned out to have a decision theoretic connection, and when it did it was vey informal (i.e. not technical) and did not actually require my kind of background. Most of my work, which spanned everything from regional economical input output analyses to ethical evaluation of noise pattern distribution around airports(!) simply required the kind of stringent thinking philosophy students acquire in their philosophical education. I would however suggest a slight tilt towards formal philosophy such as logic, decision theory, formal epistemology ect. This is to convince recruiters that you have not drunk red wine and read Sartre all through college. The ability to formalize basic ethical principles turns out to be very useful.

    I stayed at the agency for two years and then had the good fortune of securing a Assistant Profship at Stockholm University where I am now.

    Based then on my own meandering experience, I would suggest philosophers to turn to government agencies who do extensive studies on public policy, intelligence, environmental issues and perhaps financial issues. A possible way to go is also to turn to PR-bureaus who do lobby work – I understand there are a lot of those in the US. Next I would turn to some of the consultancy firms who cater to the above mentioned agencies. Especially for decision theorists there is a lot to choose from. Before I chose to work at the agency I hade job offers from off-shore rigging risk analysis firms and from firms that do fault tree analysis for nuclear power plants.

    One caveat is that of all the recruiters and HR people I have been in touch with before and after I looked for jobs, none have thought that a philosopher would be feasible choice for, well, any job really. The trick is to overcome the prejudice many people, in Sweden at least, have about philosophy as a subject. I cant give a genereal answer on how to do this but it requires knowing soemthing about what people actually do at the place where you want the job. If they do risk analysis, for example, it's good to know what kinds of problems they typically run into and then be able to explain that these problems are the kind you are familiar with through your philosophical training. It is also good to emphasize that your philosophical skills are general in that they can be applied to more or less any problem solving situation.

    /Nick

    Reply
  21. Philip Good

    I'd just like to endorse what Rob Tempio said. Publishing is a great option for philosophy graduates. I did a Masters and PhD in philosophy but decided against an academic career. There aren't a lot of philosophy publishing jobs out there but there are a huge range of other subjects philosophy graduates can and do work on. For example, I work on economics and business books.

    The only caveat, as Rob also said, is that it isn't to get into the industry. There are a huge number of humanities and social science graduates applying for a diminishing number of jobs. If anyone would like tips on getting into publishing then I would be happy to offer advice (although I should point out that most of my knowledge is of the UK publishing market).

    Reply
  22. Skef

    A note about programming, from someone who was a software engineer for about a decade, and may wind up going back to it: it isn't for everyone. Many people find the process of programming unpleasant or alienating. The field also skews young, so unless you have the people skills for a transition into management (and can deal with people crying in your office on occasion), you might find you like it less, and have fewer career options, as you get older.

    For those people who have good organizational skills and work well with people (academics often lack one or both of these, but many philosophy undergraduates will have both in spades), let me put in a plug for the general field of technical project management, especially as it relates to software and other engineering projects. It generally pays well and is in high demand. There are also "certificates" that can get you in the door and can be obtained in less than a year, but once you are there your general mental agility will be the primary factor determining your advancement. There is also less of an age bias, and you won't have to deal with having engineers reporting to you.

    Reply
  23. Sally Ferguson

    We have some good info (some borrowed from Forham University's excellent discussion of a wide variety of career paths for philosophy majors on our department website at http://uwf.edu/philosophy/Careers/.

    Reply
  24. Jason Pannone

    Librarianship is a good option. Organizing, locating, and accessing knowledge and information require many of the analytical and logical skills one learns from studying philosophy. Communication and understanding are major parts of reference. Moreover, given the rapidly shifting nature of the field, the technical side is becoming an essential part of the discipline, which plays into the strengths that others have listed above in regards to programming and such.

    Academic librarianship is one option, but one can also enter the fields of competitive intelligence, freelance researcher, and other non-traditional areas that play to the philosophy student's skill set.

    Reply
  25. Evgeni Pavlov

    Similarly to interest in logic-related fields being aligned with programming/software engineering, languages (if you read French, German and so on) might help you land a decent job in localization industry (corporate speak for large translation companies like Lionbridge or SDL). Managing localization projects can be interesting international (multicultural, if you will) work with plenty of interesting things going on.

    Reply
  26. Rob Tempio

    @AC – the best way to get into publishing is tautalogical: find a job in publishing. The best place to start to look is the website of the Association of American University Presses which lists available jobs at university presses around the country. This may mean relocating if you're willing (but then again so may your other options including grad school). Chances are you want to be on the editorial side, so I'd start by looking for jobs as an editorial assistant (though just about any job can be a necessary foot in the door). This can be pretty menial type clerical work, but it's where I started and it's where most editors start. But, it's not all that bad, when I left grad school, I delighted in the finite and easily accomplished task of photocopying manuscripts and tracking down peer reviewers, at least for the first couple of years. You're unlikely to find a job as an editor right out of the gate as an undergrad, though it might be possible if you're ABD or PhD. I should add that this isn't because publishers are looking for editors with expertise in the field they acquire books in (though that certainly doesn't hurt), as much as it is that at that level you're likely to be a bit older and wizened. Acquisition editors, what I do, are the ones who bring the books to the Press that they are likely to publish. It's their job to be out there talking to scholars, finding out what they are working on, what's new, what isn't, what the trends are, what course are being taught, etc. So to echo Philip's comment you need not necessarily limit yourself to philosophy. It's my job to be an expert about experts. Most publishers are looking for generally well-educated people excited by ideas and the world of scholarship. Philosophy did that for me.

    Reply
  27. J. Pastorius

    Philosophy has been an important, though often indirect, influence on my career path and I thought I’d share some of my experience as it may resonate with some of your younger readers. I got a B.A. in philosophy from Brown in the mid-90s and after a false start to graduate school took the turn into the working world. I started out in publishing, on the editorial side, but moved over to strategic planning and business development after about a year, having bootstrapped myself into some “business” education (which I had avoided like the plague until that point). This move to the business side of things was directly related to my critical thinking abilities and being able to step back and ask pretty basic questions about the way things were managed at the publishing company.

    After overcoming my hesitation about doing “business” I thought about going to business school or looking for a different job, and by a series of lucky breaks ended up with a large investment bank as a junior analyst in the investment banking department. I had never had an accounting or business or any kind of practical course in my life, and was told repeatedly I would get fired especially when I asked questions like “what is depreciation?” Nonetheless I worked hard (extremely hard and long hours) and progressed until I finally got promoted to the post-MBA associate level.

    Given my background, my experience was different from a person who had studied business or accounting and always wanted to be an investment banker. I didn’t really know what investment banking was until I started working at one (I had some vague erroneous notion about stockbroking). But what I found was that I gravitated toward project finance work, which is an incredibly interdisciplinary field that requires a solid understanding of financial analysis, international tax, contract analysis and negotiation, and in many cases relationship building skills with large companies and governments around the world.

    I’ve built on that training and, after some other career moves, now own my own company that develops infrastructure projects in developing countries, primarily sub-Saharan Africa. The critical thinking and analysis skills I developed as an undergrad in philosophy are vitally important to my everday work, not just in the more obvious case of enabling me to mark up a contract, for example, but more in the ability to step back and apply those skills to the big picture and guide the strategy and management of a project – and express my views clearly in written and spoken communications.

    In fact, I just wrote a short article that has been featured on the website of the U.S. Commercial Service team working with the African Development Bank – on http://www.export.gov/afdb, click on “U.S. Company Tips for Doing Business in Africa” [note: feel free to delete this link as I’m not trying to promote my company but thought the article may be useful]. The article argues that successful big projects in developing countries are “interdisciplinary,” which is in my mind another (rather loose) way of saying philosophical, in the same way that a philosophy of mind paper, for example, needs to incorporate a wide range of material into one consistent thesis.

    There are not a lot of philosophy majors (sorry: concentrators) out there in business, but when I find them they are always doing interesting things and marching a bit to their own beat, and often have a knack for displaying senior management and strategic planning skills.

    The bottom line for your young readers from me would be: don’t be afraid of big, bad business. There’s a niche for you and you’ll probably find a lot of fulfillment. There is some very interesting work in international development, for example in the private sector or with the Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC) or the International Finance Corp (IFC), both in D.C.

    Reply
  28. Donald Bruckner

    Our campus' undergraduate (academic) advising program coordinator has an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Academic advising strikes me as a good way to stay involved in higher education without going to grad school in philosophy. He gets a lot of good students enrolled in my introductory courses, and is an excellent spokesperson for the value of a liberal education. We could use more such advocates. His job is also reasonably interesting, and much more than just getting checkboxes filled for students. He has a real impact on students that is different than, but complements, the impact faculty members have. I think many advising jobs require a master's degree in student affairs or higher education administration, which he has, and which doesn't carry the same costs and tradeoffs as a Ph.D.

    I couldn't agree more with a previous remark about advertising philosophy to employers as concerned with an “analytical approach to problem-solving”. People, as we're all too aware, have some pretty bad misconceptions about what we do in philosophy and what we and our students are equipped to accomplish.

    Reply
  29. Anonymous

    It's pretty shocking that no one has mentioned teaching high school; I mean I know it's not work that our culture exalts or rewards, but it's a little bit important, and it allows one to stay engaged with the life of the mind (your's and others'), and perhaps provoke in young people the same passion for knowledge that led you to philosophy in the first place.

    Reply
  30. Jack Samuel

    Maybe more useful than the anecdotal stuff I posted above:
    One common worry is that though philosophy majors have useful skills, "BA – philosophy" might scare away employers. One field in which that is apparently not the case is lobbying. My dad hires lobbyists straight out of college at $100k/year (he is hiring labor lobbyists, and he told me that in the private sector they sometimes start as high as $250k!!!), and he said he loves seeing "philosophy" on a resume, for reasons that we all probably think are obvious.

    Reply
  31. Aaron Kenna

    I applied for, and was subsequently offered, a position with the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service as a Special Agent of Investigations. (I did, however, turn the offer down in order to pursue graduate studies.)

    Reply
  32. Undergrad Philosophy Student

    @ M.B. Willard and others,

    Hello all, I am currently an undergraduate Philosophy major. Though I do hold long term aspirations of going into academic philosophy, after graduating I would like to go into the business world, particularly in sectors related to China (I am also a Chinese major). Could anyone recommend strategies for interviewing and/or getting the foot in the door for business-related careers? Should I mainly rely on networking and a well formulated sale of my undergraduate philosophy skills? How plausible is my aspiration of landing a job in a business-related position? Any suggestions would be very helpful, thank you.

    -Rye

    Reply
  33. Teddy Wiesengrund

    I’m a graduate student with a background in philosophy and computer science. After graduating from college, I went to work in VC (before the dot.com boom went bust) and then in proprietary derivative trading (when CDS was still young and relatively innocent) at a top investment bank. After five years of work experience, I gladly returned to graduate school, where I’ve been ever since.

    I think many of the comparison which attempt to draw a more substantive comparison between philosophy and some other field overstate their case. Computer science at the highest level has some similarities with philosophy, and certainly some interesting implications worthy of philosophical consideration, but most programming is in fact applying a subset of algorithms over and over again. It is, I would argue, more closely related to engineering than philosophy, though certainly both fields involve analytic problem solving.

    As for the comparisons with business. I can only say that these years were intellectually impoverished – and not just for me, but for all my fellow Ivy League lemmings that jumped off the cliff with me into the world of finance and consulting. I’m sure things become a bit more stimulating as one moves up the ladder, but most business work, no matter how “interdisciplinary” and problem solving, offers neither the intellectual rigor nor the intellectual interest of philosophy. (“For what may I hope? To make tons of money.”) Certainly, for some, there can be much fun to have in the business world – and even more money to be made — but let’s not deceive the unwary into thinking that the business world has more than passing similarities with philosophy, or that the former shares in the latter’s aura.

    I would add one more important consideration for undergraduates: who your colleagues are going to be. Elite business careers constantly seduce undergraduates with their claims that they, ensconced in their gleaming towers for endless shifts of shit work, constitute the very best. (There is an interesting ethnography that touches on this – Ho’ “Liquidated” – a book that I commend to all faculty counseling undergraduates about careers at elite universities, despite some of its more speculative claims.) A good number of the people I worked with were decent human beings. But as a group they were among the least intellectually curious people I knew, venturing, at most onto the WSJ’s art page, or reminiscing over memories of halcyon seminars under dappled trees as fantasized by Robin Williams and college glossies everywhere. A large part of the pleasure and significance of academe comes from being part of a stimulating and meaningful conversation. I don’t doubt that one can find other networks of interesting and interested people engaged in meaningful conversations, but be careful where you look.

    Reply
  34. Charles Pigden

    This may not translate into the US context, but in New Zealand many of our top students go on to careers in the public service, particularly MFAT (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade), the Ministry of Social Development and Treasury. When I talk about top students I mean people with a serious interest in and capacity for philosophy, who have either done the four year BA (hons) [which includes a research component] or else an MA [which is a research only qualification in New Zealand]. Tim Mulgan, perhaps our most brilliant graduate during my time at Otago is an interesting for instance. He did a stint in Treasury after completing his BA hons before going on to do his DPhil at Oxford. He returned to academia but many of our best graduates do not.

    I don't know, of course, but my suspicion is that this kind of career path is not uncommon in Europe, which is why I was slightly surprised that none of the commentators suggested it for the US. Certainly non-US readers should consider this as an option for themselves (if they are students) or for their students (if they are professors).

    OF course if you are willing to sell your soul to Satan, Krugman suggests that in the US you can make a good living in the Think Tanks as a conservative intellectual.

    Reply
  35. Browneyedgirl

    I am currently an undergraduate Philosophy student, I am considering doing graduate studies in in counseling psychology. Has anyone done this or considered doing it?

    Reply
  36. Andrew Christman

    I saw this article about philosophical counseling in the Washington Post a while back:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2011/08/18/gIQA7yxNXJ_story.html

    I'm not sure what to make of it. Freely drawing from competing philosophical explanations to attempt to cure a highly personal ailment seems somewhat improper to me, at least when compared to the use of philosophy to explain the world objectively.

    At the same time, there may be something true in the view that people can have personal problems from a lack of wisdom, as opposed to viewing every single problem as a medical and biological disorder.

    Reply

Designed with WordPress