Back in 2011, with many suggestions from readers. I'll open comments here if readers want to add more, but please look at the earlier thread first.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
9 responses to “Blast from the past: Good career paths for undergraduate philosophy majors?”
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Thinking about where my fellow phil majors from undergrad ended up (the ones who didn't go to grad school, anyway – and many ended up in grad school in non-philosophy fields), about half went the law school route. The second most popular has been teaching high school (English, Government, History – probably about what you'd expect in terms of philosophy-adjacent areas). I think teaching is a really excellent route; many subjects involve some sort of philosophical content, and some high schools offer electives in philosophy.
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Medicine – some of of our best trainees have undergraduate philosophy degrees, usually as double majors with a natural sciences degree.
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I ended up in Business/consulting – HR and business transformation after an MBA pathway. Most of my undergrad phil peers (Australia) ended up in government grad programs with the likes of the Federal Police and other public service organisations. Most of those that went on to grad programs didn't stay in Philosophy with Law, Business, and IT/Computer Science being popular.
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I did a degree and MA in philosophy and bloody loved both. Other things I have done that I have loved: acting, statistics, tutoring (mathematics), teaching (English as a foreign language).
Note: I am finishing off a degree in statistics (part-time, night school) which I was led to by philosophy. (Plato > maths > Russell > logic > maths again > stats)
Skills learned/honed in philosophy were useful in all of these but, more importantly (to me), all these appealed in ways that philosophy did as well.
E.g. I really liked early analytic philosophy, Russell, Wittgenstein, and questions about the relation between language, thought and reality – including how we learn meaning etc. All that good stuff. I also really loved the social aspect of philosophy – you sit in a room and you talk with people. And you try to be as clear as possible with as vivid an example as you can come up with. And of course you try to pre-empt any misunderstandings before they arise. I also loved learning about the social contexts in which these great ideas and arguments I studied would arise. It brought humility to my opinion of 21st century life, life in my country (the UK) etc.
All of this was really useful and/or nice when teaching English. I got to go away and think really hard about the core meaning/use of a concept. Try to find as clear and vivid a way to communicate it – with as few, and as simple, words as possible. Try to pre-empt any misunderstandings – and boy, when you are teaching language to people from another culture, they sure do find the counterexamples in what you have said VERY quickly! And I got to do it all in a room of people talking where I usually learned something new about other cultures. It is in education which I value highly. And, whereas for me learning a second language is a luxury, for many it was a route to a better economic standard of living. So, like teaching critical thinking, it empowers the students. Lastly, if you dig deeper, you quickly bump into plenty of your old friends from philosophy of language when you read the literature around language acquisition. Lovely!
So, if you like thinking clearly about concepts, have a knack for explaining things, get a kick out of helping people, and are interested in ways of being human other than your own, I think you could do much worse than ESL.
Statistics feels like all of the stuff I did in philosophy (plus more), but constrained to plausibility rather than certainty, and all tailored to a practical environment. You get to think of interesting questions which, if they are aimed at improving something in your organisation, you might get to investigate. So you can think about how you will test them to avoid bias and be representative (how I loved to cast aspersions on the empirical results of others – well, now I have to go into the trenches myself!). You can play around with computers to fill your logic boots, then interpret the results intelligently(!), and try to find clear and vivid ways to present all that. If you are really lucky you can make practical recommendations. If the stars align, you might even be listened to (imagine that!).
So, if your organisation has a good data culture then, while you'll never be a philosopher-king, you might end up something of a Merlin to one. Which is pretty cool. (Although normally you are treated as more of a Plato to Dionysus!)
Lastly, I was never very good at mathematics (hated it in school). Philosophy changed my opinion on the subject. And the promise of statistical skills and understanding was/is enough to see me through the less directly relevant parts of study. But there are plenty of jobs that don't require sophisticated mathematics (or statistics, or computing!) to start with. So don't be put off if you like the description but feel you aren't a 'maths person' – neither am I. But mastering a small set of basic techniques (including all the stuff about when (not) to apply them, and what they tell you) along with crystal clear communication skills, and a good attitude, can get you in the door. The rest, you learn as you go.
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There are some interesting suggestions in the old post that tap into the skills that philosophers value. But it's worth saying that philosophy graduates can apply for pretty much anything that anyone else can (I'm writing from the UK, so can't really speak to the job market elsewhere). Yes, some companies might favour STEM graduates to varying degrees, but plenty will take humanities grads (including banks, accountancy firms and consultancies). Almost any graduate training scheme (run by anyone from Amazon to central government) is just after smart graduates.
I've been involved in a lot of recruitment in a number of organisations, and in the initial sift I've never considered the degree subject that relevant in contrast to how well-written the application is and how well an applicant does in some kind of competency-based assessment. And once they're through to interview, the subject is totally irrelevant.
I would strongly encourage students to attend some careers fairs and learn just how many different employers are out there that are happy to take arts and humanities grads. Once you move away from careers that require specific further training (and it's tempting for those who haven't yet experienced the world of work to think about more qualifications as the key to success) and from the idea that subjects can be paired with careers, there really are very few limits.
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If I may, I’d be interested to hear thoughts on which career paths are such that majoring in philosophy (without a second major) is not merely adequate but advisable. The former befits assuring students (and parents of students) who already want to major in philosophy that the student will be able to get a job. However, concerning recruiting majors, it includes career paths for which other majors are seemingly a better choice (e.g., you can be a philosophy major and still get a job in journalism, but if the inquiry starts with what major a student should choose if they want to be a journalist, presumably, they should major in journalism, right?). It seems like philosophy is an advisable major for students interested in law school. What other career paths are such that philosophy is an *advisable* major? Thanks!
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I left grad school in philosophy and headed into the financial services segment, working for boutique investment banks. The analytical skill set sharpened by my philosophy studies, was highly useful in vetting transactions, research and valuation analysis. Broke out and started my own firm, aligning the biz focus (sustainability and social impact) with my values. Concerns of justice – social, economic and environmental have been key themes in the governance advisory side of my business. Always have been passionate about learning new things and talking with interesting people and now I see many biz plans, work with companies around the world and have an opportunity to advocate for matters of relational equity in the workplace, restoring dignity to labor, better governance and a stakeholder perspective in terms of industrial logic. The bonus is that I work for myself, and it affords me the flexibility to stay engaged in academics, attending philosophy, political economy and theory, intellectual history and economics conferences around the world. So, I am feeling fortunate that I had a strong foundation in philosophy and feel it was a launching pad for some pretty good stuff.
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Hey Todd Pitcher, good to see your name!
I appreciate all these good ideas. I will add contract management and lobbying to my list.
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As a practicing (non-research-focused) clinical psychologist, I think an argument can be made that a degree in philosophy is superior to a degree in psychology. The capacity to think critically and self-reflect, required skills as a therapist, is developed at a much deeper level than in a psychology major, where it seems that many undergraduate courses are focused on memorizing facts/knowledge in multiple-choice exams. I think philosophy departments that expose students to broader streams of thought, particularly thinkers who talk more about how to live one's life and how to deal with death, are extremely useful for future therapists. Having gone to UCLA, my exposure to thinkers like Nietzsche, Hegel, Jaspers, etc. was basically non-existent and something that I have come to in my own readings in theory related to psychology. So, I do not think a philosophy degree is sufficient to a future career as a therapist, but taking 4-5 background courses in psychology in addition to majoring in philosophy would give student a solid foundation for attending a practice-oriented graduate program.
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