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Good undergraduate experiences in philosophy?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–MORE COMMENTS WELCOME

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

I'm curious about whether your blog's readers have a sense of which American colleges and universities offer the best philosophy education for undergraduates (not necessarily undergraduates intending to make a career of philosophy). I'd be interested even in anecdotal evidence, such as personally good (or bad) experiences that people have had studying philosophy as undergrads. 

I'm asking because I have a daughter who is approaching college age, and other things being equal (an important caveat) I'd like her to go somewhere that has a good philosophy program for undergraduates.

The PGR has long had a section on undergraduate study (the section for the 2021 PGR is being updated), but I take it what is sought here are reports from current or former undergraduates or from parents whose kids had good experiences at particular schools.  Please include a valid email address, and for negative comments, a name is preferred in addition to the email address (which will not appear).

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21 responses to “Good undergraduate experiences in philosophy?”

  1. Chris Surprenant

    I imagine for most of us, our positive (or negative!) experiences were linked to specific faculty members and not to the program itself.

    I had a wonderful, life-changing experience in the philosophy at Colby College. Dan Cohen (retired), Cheshire Calhoun (ASU), Sarah Conly (retired), Jeff Kasser (CSU), Jill Gordon (still at Colby!), and Joe Reisert (still at Colby, in political science) made that possible.

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  2. Rutgers

    I went to Rutgers as an undergraduate (about a decade ago now) and while there, we had many students end up in top PhD programs and elite law schools. I think there were a few reasons for this. The course roster is typically quite large and you can usually find the tenured faculty teaching at all levels and teaching a very wide array of courses. Most of the graduate students, in my experience, were so good that they were hardly consolation prize. For juniors, they have a special small seminar that also really helps with skill building. And the major requirements were fairly flexible. Outside of the class room there was an active philosophy club, an undergraduate philosophy journal, an undergraduate bioethics journal, some MAP events that included undergraduates, and even philosophy "special interest" housing. The result was an active community of students excited about philosophy taking all kinds of courses with the Rutgers faculty and graduate students. Of course, faculty, etc. have turned over a fair bit and who knows whether the community of undergraduates has been sustained. But I'd say it's worth a look.

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  3. AL

    Consider whether the college has a junior-year exchange with Oxford or Cambridge (many US campuses do). Though study abroad is notoriously inconsistent, the Cambridge exchange I did basically just let me be a student there for a year, so I didn't have time to make it a "eurotrip." This can complement (or make up for) the academic offerings at a home campus in a few ways. First, the student gets to focus on one subject instead of the usual 4-5 courses for a term. Second, though the quality of teaching depends on the supervisor/tutor (since that person reviews all of your work for the term), everyone can go to regular lectures by the university's core philosophy faculty, which offer exposure to some really excellent philosophy (Raymond Guess and Stedman-Jones's lectures on Marx were particularly memorable to me). Third, my US undergraduate experience rarely matched the intensity of the 1-1 or 1-2 weekly supervision (aka tutorial). At Cambridge I had to write about 24 argumentative research essays over the year (~1/week) and got immediate feedback in the supervision. My US-based classes asked me to write once or twice per term, and mostly (but not always0 I got written comments. So if I were evaluating undergraduate options again, the chance to do this sort of exchange would figure heavily. All that said, I think programs like this appeal more to students whose idea of being an undergraduate is more "academic"–i.e., doesn't mind temporarily leaving the extracurricular life of their home college (clubs and sports or whatever).

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  4. SLAC grad

    I attended a small liberal arts school (St. Edward's University) in Austin, TX. My experience was overwhelmingly positive. The faculty there was relatively small (5 full time philosophy faculty, if I remember correctly), but they covered a wide range of courses. I was exposed (in large part due to degree requirements) to a very broad range of philosophical approaches, which is to say, I was educated in both the "continental" and "analytic" schools. This, I have found, was much to my benefit, because although I now count myself as working (broadly speaking) in the analytic tradition, I'm at least competent to speak to people working from a very broad range of perspectives.

    I can't say whether this holds generally, but at least with regard to the SLAC that I attended, I found that the educational experience was something that I would not have gotten from a more "mainstream" department. That is to say, my educational background coming into a four year institution was such that I was the kind of student that required quite a bit of attention and mentorship. I was an extremely poor student in high school, and spent 2.5 years in community college before transferring to a 4 year institution, and so as someone aspiring to do professional scholarly work I needed people who were willing to take the time to show me how to do really polished philosophical work. Given the small size of the department and the dedication to high quality teaching at my undergraduate institution, I found those things in all of the faculty with whom I worked.

    So, I suppose the main moral of my story is this: SLACs might be a really good option, especially for certain kinds of students. This is part of the reason that it's so saddening to see liberal arts education being so strangely demoted at "liberal arts" colleges.

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  5. John Rapko

    I was an undergraduate in philosophy at UC Berkeley in the mid-late 1980s. At that time (and perhaps still) they had a basic course in philosophical writing wherein you paired off with another student and alternated weekly in writing short papers on a lecture and text. Then you met weekly with the other student and a T.A. and discussed the paper. The intensive focus and requirement of regular writing and small-group discussion afforded as good an institutionally mandated structure as I could imagine. Another valuable bit of structure were the frequent visiting lecturers. I mostly slept through the lectures, was awakened by the applause and grabbed some free coffee and pastries, then listened to the Q & A battles: John Searle scoffing and bringing up skiing and/or beer-drinking, Barry Stroud making it plain with the example of running a traffic sign in the middle of the night, Donald Davidson mumbling, Bernard Williams annihilating anyone foolish enough to give a lecture in his presence, etc.–it was terrifically stimulating and educational.–But as suggested above (#1), I think that for myself and perhaps others, what's most important are individual teachers, and who those are and how they help you is not always predictable. At Berkeley I was most aided by every sentence from the now-retired Hans Sluga, the play-acting and storytelling of the deceased Paul Feyerabend, and the essay-length responses to my epistemology essays from the not-yet renowned T.A. Sally Haslanger. But the single most valuable educational experience I had was before Berkeley, when a philosophy teacher at Santa Clara University threw back my Wittgenstein paper with the words "Rapko, my 5 year-old could write a better paper than this."–So perhaps the moral is something like that of SLAC above: the best option is one with a great deal and variety of wide-ranging but intensive individual and small-group interaction; and, above all, no coddling.

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  6. Reedie

    I graduated from Reed College, a small LAC in Portland, OR, several years ago and would highly recommend it for philosophy. In general, students there are very intellectually engaged and curious. I would especially recommend it to anyone who might want to attend graduate school: many of my peers are now in top 10 graduate programs in philosophy, and I found that it was excellent preparation for graduate school. (Many other peers are in graduate programs in other areas or law school; of course, many also do other things.) Classes are small (often ~10 people, no more than 20) and discussion-based, and you get extensive comments and 'paper conferences' on essentially all of your written work. The faculty are brilliant and available to meet, including regularly when working on a senior thesis. The campus is idyllic and the traditions quirky. In addition, Reed is relatively less selective than other LAC's of its caliber and offers very good need-blind financial aid, in case that is relevant.

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  7. Jay Mullen

    I had an unforgettable experience at the University of Delaware in the mid-late 90's. Took Intro to Philosophy with Paul Tidman my first semester of freshman year. Was hooked. Alan Fox was the best teacher I've had at any level and it's not even close. Other great teachers back then were Professor's Jordan and Boorse and Dilley. Had a blast at UDEL, loved it…and the philosophy was sneaky good.

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  8. Robert Allen

    My daughter Abbie is currently taking a splendid Intro Philosophy course at The University of Michigan, with Professor Sarah Moss. Star-studded syllabus, both in authors and content; and you can see therefrom that the course is thematic, building to a discussion of the fascinating issue of the ethics of belief. The TA is good, too. My daughter is always texting to our family group-chat about the exciting discussions that she conducts. Nothing like seeing a child grow to appreciate philosophy.

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  9. Reedie B

    I also graduated from Reed several years ago; and I second every one of the comments which 'Reedie' made above. It's a pretty great place to quietly learn a bunch of cutting edge philosophy. (And also to get a good, well-rounded general education.)

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  10. Allen Hazen

    I'd urge the daughter to go to some college with a good philosophy department (in so far as the parent can determine this), but otherwise I doubt there is much you can do to increase the probability of a good philosophy experience. (Well… Check the department web page: things to look for, I'd think, should include (i) reasonable size of philosophy staff, (ii) at least some staff of each sex, and (iii) there ought to be some youngish ones: these are all orthogonal to over-all philosophical quality, but I think they increase the probability that the daughter will find at least some philosophy teachers she likes.) But don't expect to be able to foretell…
    Sceptical points:
    —I had a good experience as a philosophy major, but the reasons would not have shown up if my parents had been able to look at a department web page (not that there were such things when I was in high school!). My interests and specialization were inconsistent with the department "ethos" (I was an analytic student, and the department at my undergraduate institution was strongly, umm, "pluralist".) The philosophy teachers I was closes to and and who had the most influence on me were young assistant professors, all of whom had left the institution by a year or two after my graduation. My honors thesis adviser was a visiting faculty member who was there only for my senior year.
    —I taught for many years at a university with a strong philosophy department, where many students seem to have had very good philosophy experiences. From observation, and from talking to students, it seemed to me that one of the most important contributing factors to good student experiences was that the department office staff was outgoing and friendly: this made coming to the philosophy office (and to the department library behind it) a good experience and not an intimidating one. Go figure.

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  11. anon

    Brandeis was terrific for me. A program that was modest in size, but gave people a lot of attention if they wanted it. Most important for me was the instruction and advising from David Wong (now at Duke) and Eli Hirsch (still there despite UT Austin's attempt to lure him away).

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  12. High School Teacher

    I'll echo much of what was wonderful about Berkeley. At such a large school, it was a special experience to have a graduating class of less than forty. The professors were generous with their time, but there was also a bootcamp atmosphere about a handful of introductory courses. Introductory logic required obsessive attention, and the introductory writing course shaped me as a writer forever. Meeting for half an hour, once a week, and one-on-one gave you nowhere to hide. I still write, and my inner editor's voice is still James Genome's voice (asking me what I really mean and then telling me to just say that then).

    Another humbling story: Barry Stroud telling a hungover and 19 year old me that if I was going to be the next David Hume I would know already. And then unraveling everything I thought I knew about cause and effect. It was a tough day.

    I know a few that have gone through the program in the last decade, and I think it still is proudly rigorous and tight knit.

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  13. Overanalyzer

    I went to Dartmouth College for my undergrad and think that the philosophy department there can offer a pretty amazing undergraduate experience. It has researchers who are top of their field and also happen to be mostly amazing teachers, but no grad program, so willing and advanced undergraduates are basically treated like graduate students, in all the good ways (and non of the bad, from what I could see). I had great mentorship experiences with David Plunkett,Sam Levey, Christie Thomas just to name a few, and although I was only there before Amy Thomasson arrived, from the interactions I have had afterwards, she seems like a pretty great teacher too. Dartmouth also has a pretty great track record of getting people into good PhD programs straight out of undergrad.
    That being said, Dartmouth the College, not the philosophy department, is a place that won't offer a great undergraduate experience to all. It is very, very isolated, has a distinctive "Dartmouth" college life and culture which I did not like coming from Europe, and is very frat-oriented. So, as always, the "other things being equal" caveat in the original post is pretty hard to satisfy. And it is an important caveat, because the philosophy department is usually not the biggest part of one's undergrad studies and life.

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  14. Daniel Cohen

    The reports of my retirement are greatly exaggerated. I'm just on sabbatical this year. but after teaching remotely for the three semesters before that and having take a medical leave in the semester just before (Fall 2019), it has been a while since I've engaged in normal in-class teaching. I sure do miss it!

    Dan Cohen

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  15. Former Israeli

    I did my undergrad in the Hebrew University in Israel and now in a grad program outside.
    I believe no American undergrad program can compare with us on the breadth of classes and topics we had to pick from. However, the faculty here was dominated by one dogmatic and bullying professor and he turned away many students from philosophy. The lesson being that what is important with undergrad education is more about nurturing an intellectual environment than the quality of the program or the size of the faculty.

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  16. Robert

    I had a really excellent experience at the Notre Dame philosophy department as an undergraduate. It's a very fine launching place if you want to pursue philosophy further, but there are lots of other career options available as well. Two things particularly stood out to me. One is that it's a large department filled with professors who do significant undergraduate teaching, so there are always a lot of =course offerings in many different areas of philosophy from first-rate philosophers. The second is that every undergraduate student at the university is required to take two philosophy courses, so among the people a student is likely to meet, most will have taken philosophy courses and many will be interested in discussing material from courses in a casual manner. It's really nice to have other students be exposed to your discipline and find the topics and ideas therein worthwhile and interesting.

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  17. James

    I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Memphis and became interested in philosophy there. While I know that many readers of Leiter Reports look askance at SPEP programs, Memphis was a tremendously exciting place to study philosophy, a friendly, small department where the students were passionate and serious and the professors were great. The highlight of my undergraduate career was a cross-listed undergrad/grad seminar on Sartre and De Beauvoir taught by Robert Bernasconi (who is now at Penn State). I loved my logic classes with Timothy Roche. I earned an F in a seminar on Husserl and Heidegger taught by Tom Nenon. I went on to graduate school at UT Austin and finished almost all my coursework for the Ph.D., but I left philosophy with an M.A. and became a lawyer. I didn’t find philosophy as interesting in graduate school as I did in undergrad, and I realized I would never have a future in philosophy. I took a seminar with Brian Leiter at UT by the way, and he was terrific, a truly engaging and supportive professor. He and David Braybrooke were the best professors I studied with at UT.

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  18. Isabel

    I had an excellent experience at the University of Portland, a Holy Cross-run LAC in Portland, OR. The department is surprisingly large for the size of the school, and there is good representation for pretty much every area of philosophy. The focus is on teaching, not research, and this is demonstrated in the commitment the professors have to their students' success. Shout out to Dr. James Baillie (ethics, Hume), Dr. Alejandro Santana (Ancient Philosophy, logic), and Dr. Paddy McShane (bioethics) in particular for being fantastic.

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  19. Bill Kennedy IV

    I went to Bowling Green State University, well known for applied ethics (R.G. Frey, a powerhouse in animal ethics, taught there for a number of years). I had amazing classes with Richard Yetter Chappell (now at U Miami), Kevin Vallier (still there), and Donald Callen (RIP). Also giving a s/o to Molly Gardner (now at U Florida) for doing an independent study with me on predation ethics (still a niche field in animal ethics). I later went on to law school and then graduate school for biblical studies. The department has had its problems over the years (not just with the Koch Foundation) so I can't recommend it for today's youngsters, but at one point it was the acme of what a strong undergraduate program should be: undergrads presenting at grad colloquiums, undergrads moderating talks at grad student workshops and attending regular conferences and ethics bowl competitions. As the existentialist philosopher Axl Rose notes, "nothing lasts forever".

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  20. Wisco

    I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the mid 2010's and had an incredible experience. Professors were very giving of their time and exceptional teachers. I did not know much about philosophy coming into university and was a bit intimidated, but the small department size in terms of undergraduate students made it feel like a welcoming community. Most of the friends I still keep in contact with from college are from the philosophy department. It was a very rigorous environment, which I appreciated, and I credit most of my professional success to the critical thinking and writing skills I developed while at UW-Madison. I had the opportunity to take an independent study focusing on the Critique of Pure Reason with James Messina that was the highlight of my undergraduate experience. Other shout-outs go to Martha Gibson's Consciousness seminar which had a profound effect on me as an undergraduate and was probably the hardest class I took at UW, and Alan Sidelle, who taught an exceptional senior metaphysics seminar.

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  21. Robert Allen

    Dear Professor Leiter,

    It just occurred to me that I should add that my son Anthony received, like MANY others before him, an excellent undergraduate philosophy education at Oberlin College, home of the Quine Sign (Ohio Historical Marker). Ditto my oldest daughter Alison at my old Plantinga-Gettier-Castaneda haunted stomping grounds, Wayne State University.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

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