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My philosophy degree helped me greatly in my decision to pursue a graduate degree in something else. If you follow an analytical program instead of taking a bunch of continental or topics classes, it's essentially a degree in taking the verbal portion of whatever grad admissions test you go for, and that's cool and all, but you should pair your understanding of arguments with a solid dose or understanding that a sound argument is not necessarily convincing to most people, and that learning to be persuasive is more useful than learning to be correct.
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Dec 19, 2015 13:25
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I've got a philosophy degree but unless you plan on teaching or maybe law, it's not really worth it. I'd totally recommend getting a minor in it with a major in something more useful. I work at a veterinary hospital these days. For the record I tried teaching and it didn't take. Working with animals is way better than working with people
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Mar 27, 2016 22:23
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I have a BA in Philosophy and an AS in Archaeology. I currently bartend for a living (haha), but have had a few rewarding jobs working in film, either in the production department as a PA or creating storyboards. People seem to appreciate the ability to solve problems that come with a Philosophy degree, and I guess the Archaeology one shows that I will do dirty work for hours on end for next to nothing, and that I know how to dig a very neat hole/grave.
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Mar 31, 2016 19:03
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Drink-Mix Man posted:Literally all I've ever heard about it are the played-out jokes about how it's a bullshit degree for burn-outs, smuggos, and live-at-home manchildreN Why do you think this is a joke? Theres a hard hitting question to write a term paper about.
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Mar 31, 2016 23:50
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Drink-Mix Man posted:Anyone want to tell me the real deal with this major? First we need to define the terms used in this question. What is "real" anyway and in what ways can that term be in fact applied to "deal"? And whose definition of "deal" are we discussing here? According to Bertrand Russell in his essay onFFAAAAARRRRT I did a philosophy BA in the UK, graduating in 2002. I personally don't regret it, but I was doing it in a very different economy and job market to today (and paying lower tuition than students even a couple of years later than me). My career is completely unrelated, I got a job as a data entry clerk after graduating in order to not starve and have now worked my way up into a well-paid, if dull, technical specialist role. I don't know how common that sort of career path is these days, particularly in the USA. But intellectually and in terms of my own personal development as a human being it has been really important. Critical thinking, the ability to evaluate arguments and apply logic (which has been very useful in my career as a complaints investigator), a critical understanding of politics and the ethical systems that drive different ideas ... all great in developing you as a human being, all (with a few exceptions) really useless at making you employable, at least on a CV. I read somewhere (at the time I was studying) that Philosophy grads had one of the lowest rates of employment 6 months after graduation, but one of the highest 2 years after graduation. Maybe that's because Philosophy grads have problems getting back into the real world ("Apply for a job? I'M NOT EVEN SURE I EXIST!") from a very abstract intellectual bubble, but I think it's that the skills you pick up in a Philosophy degree make you very effective in a job, but are very bad at getting you employed in the first place because they're not obvious to employers. A lot of my fellow grads struggled with temp and McJobs after graduation, despite being incredibly skilled and smart people. A couple quit promising careers because they had ethical problems with what their employers were doing. But eventually they did get their act together and excelled at what they did. I just hope my experiences and advice aren't out of date. I have a horrible feeling that they are  It's not something I regret, not for a second, and I suspect that if I didn't I would be really regretting that decision. But I can't deny that doing Philosophy is taking a bit of a gamble with your career prospects compared to other disciplines, and 14 years on that may be too much of a risk for most people to take any more.
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Apr 4, 2016 20:01
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My buddy went to Stanford and got a B.A. in Philosophy, then went to Law School at Harvard and is now 27 and works at some big firm and makes a lot of money. So you could do that.
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Apr 5, 2016 05:59
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"Just get into Harvard Law and you'll be set"
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Apr 5, 2016 16:26
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I graduated with a degree in classics, but I minored in philosophy and my undergrad thesis was on classical philosophy. I am not sure what you are trying to do after school but I think this major would definitely help you develop valuable skills. First, you will have to learn to be really good at logical at logical arguments. If you’re gettin in to business or management or some other more practical field this is a very valuable skill set to have. Second, you will develop exceptional communication skills. Don’t under estimate the value of being able to effectively convey complex issues. Third, you should be able to argue basically anything. This includes why people should give you a job after you Graduate. Fourth, you’ll get used to looking at big picture stuff. If you’re able to conceptualize the entire structure of a company and how the gears interact you can definitely give yourself a head up in interviews. Is it the safest path to take? Probably not. But if you cut it with business or some other practical degree it could probably help you. I think skills I developed in philosophy were very helpful in making me standout in the job market and I LOVED what I studied. I don’t love the debt I’m in now, and that’s where the question has to come in for you.
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Apr 9, 2016 17:09
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We really should disincentivize people from getting liberal arts degrees. The US government should probably stop offering student loans for these degrees. If you really desperately want to study philosophy or literature, be a good enough student to get a scholarship or have your wealthy parents pay for it. We already have too many people studying these subjects. Some students study these subjects for ~9-11 years to get a Ph.D. only to find at the end of all that that there are no jobs for them. Almost all of the economic success stories in this thread are from people who went out and got a useful education in medicine or law after their philosophy degree.
silence_kit fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 20:09
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silence_kit posted:We really should disincentivize people from studying liberal arts degrees. The US government should probably stop offering student loans for these degrees. If you really desperately want to study philosophy or literature, be a good enough student to get a scholarship or have your wealthy parents pay for it. We already have too many people studying these subjects. Some students study these subjects for ~9-11 years to get a Ph.D. only to find at the end of all that that there are no jobs for them. Almost all of the economic success stories in this thread are from people who went out and got a useful education in medicine or law after their philosophy degree. If only we had access to actual data rather than having to choose whichever anecdotes from a forums thread confirm our existing beliefs! A BA in philosophy or literature, like pretty much any BA, substantially increases your expected lifetime earnings. (A PhD is a different question entirely) And it appears to be substantially better at improving core thinking/writing skills than supposedly "useful" degrees like business. We only have too many people with liberal arts degrees under the assumption that having a philosophy degree should lead to a philosophy job, under which reasoning we have too much of nearly every degree. (even people with computer science degrees are usually only doing computer science jobs in the loosest sense of the term) And lol that one of your examples of a good useful degree to get is a law degree
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Apr 10, 2016 20:43
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:If only we had access to actual data rather than having to choose whichever anecdotes from a forums thread confirm our existing beliefs! If anyone says a business degree is useful, they should just stop.
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Apr 10, 2016 22:37
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Eskaton posted:If anyone says a business degree is useful, they should just stop. the networking you do in a business degree at the right school with the right friends can be useful for making money (notice how these things have little to do with the degree syllabus)
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Apr 10, 2016 23:59
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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grvm posted:I graduated with a degree in classics, but I minored in philosophy and my undergrad thesis was on classical philosophy. I am not sure what you are trying to do after school but I think this major would definitely help you develop valuable skills. For getting ahead in business, being good at rhetoric is more useful than being good at logic 10 times out of 10. =(
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Apr 14, 2016 15:33
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silence_kit posted:We really should disincentivize people from getting liberal arts degrees. The US government should probably stop offering student loans for these degrees. If you really desperately want to study philosophy or literature, be a good enough student to get a scholarship or have your wealthy parents pay for it. We already have too many people studying these subjects. Some students study these subjects for ~9-11 years to get a Ph.D. only to find at the end of all that that there are no jobs for them. Almost all of the economic success stories in this thread are from people who went out and got a useful education in medicine or law after their philosophy degree. This may come as a surprise to you, but some people value learning and self-enrichment over economic success.
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Apr 18, 2016 08:02
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raskalnikov_86 posted:This may come as a surprise to you, but some people value learning and self-enrichment over economic success. True, but for the majority of people being at least financially stable enough to pay for lodging, food, medical expenses, and raise a family matters. If you are independently wealthy that's great, and frankly I think we're retreating back to the days of advanced degrees in the humanities mostly being something that the rich do to fill their days. As it stands now, though, spending 4 years (at a minimum, let's not even talk about what a waste a PhD is) and a poo poo load of cash to get a degree that won't put you in a good position to at least make ends meet is a lovely proposition. I say this as someone with a PhD in German history.
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Apr 18, 2016 16:25
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I suppose the question is should we dis-incentivize liberal arts, or just incentivize STEM? Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had been more vigorously discouraged from getting a Philosophy degree. Then again, would I have actually listened? But hey, Philosophy gave me the tools to understand this plight, so that's something. Another much cheaper way to get an overview of the topic: educational YouTube channel Crash Course started a a series on Philosophy. Right now, it's like and half-and-half logic and religious philosophy. For just ten minutes, it's tough to do better.
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Apr 18, 2016 17:23
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Oh I'll be the first one to say that a lot can be gleaned from studying the humanities. I'm a huge proponent of a rigorous liberal arts education.* The problem is that too many humanities departments don't really acknowledge the job market and just make a hand-wavy assertion that you can get "all sorts of jobs" with a philosophy/history/literature/etc degree. We need a lot more structured guidance for students that pushes them in directions where there are jobs. If someone walks in and is dead set on going to grad school in history, fine, help them go down that path. The kid who comes in without much of an idea what they want to do needs to be given some concrete choices and shown some career options so they don't just migrate to what they think will be an easy major and skate out with a BA that does gently caress all for them. Frankly this is a problem at all levels in academia. I could write some really bile-filled walls of text about how blind a lot of history departments are to the hosed job situation and how they need to do a better job of helping people prepare for non-academic jobs, but that's a bitchfest for the grad school thread. Personally I think that the best bet for someone who really wants to enrich themselves and study a topic more deeply is to get a minor in it. Your average bachelor's program will have a LOT of slack built in for electives. If you love philosophy fill up your extra classes with philosophy. gently caress, if you love it enough go hog wild and major in it, just do so with the clear understanding that you are limiting yourself compared to a more easily employable major. * note the word "rigorous" there - some schools do it well and some do it really poorly. A lot of small LACs do a good job of teaching non-majors at a high level and really hammering in the major techniques and ways of thinking that you get from taking classes outside the discipline you want to specialize in. ON the other hand a lot of schools turn it into an exercise in punching out the required courses, which leads to a lot of low quality courses that don't teach much and just exist to get someone that lit or foreign language requirement.
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Apr 18, 2016 18:51
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Cyrano4747 posted:True, but for the majority of people being at least financially stable enough to pay for lodging, food, medical expenses, and raise a family matters. If you are independently wealthy that's great, and frankly I think we're retreating back to the days of advanced degrees in the humanities mostly being something that the rich do to fill their days. May I ask what you do for a living now? I know that the vast majority of humanities PhD's don't get cush jobs teaching and making 70k a year, but I have a hard time believing that y'all are frequenting soup kitchens. raskalnikov_86 fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Apr 19, 2016 |
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Apr 19, 2016 05:05
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raskalnikov_86 posted:May I ask what you do for a living now? I know that the vast majority of humanities PhD's don't get cush jobs teaching and making 70k a year, but I have a hard time believing that y'all are frequenting soup kitchens. At the moment I'm busting my rear end doing academic job applications. I've been getting a steady stream of rejections, but I'm still working at it. I'm also filing a bunch of job apps for government jobs and generally trying to whore myself out on the DC market. I know a couple of people who have ended up in specialist consultant roles in that area, plus one who is working K Street right now. That's doubly hilarious because he used to be the biggest community activist, young Democrat type known to man. He almost hosed up a bunch of classes in 2008 because he was spending so much time going door to door for Obama. Now he's lobbying for big pharma. Right now? Right now I'm working 30 hours a week as an archivist for a company that develops historic properties. I'm technically an intern, so I'm pulling $15/hr with no benefits. God I hope I'm not still doing this in a year.
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Apr 19, 2016 17:58
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raskalnikov_86 posted:This may come as a surprise to you, but some people value learning and self-enrichment over economic success. This isn't about min-maxing your degree and optimizing your life so you can be filthy rich and swim in piles of money, this is about not taking on 10s-100s of thousands of dollars in debt and spending four years of your life on something of dubious economic value. A lot of people who say that they don't really care about money actually highly value things like being able to afford to live in an area where you don't have to worry about crime and being able to actually not worry about money and not constantly be in debt and living from paycheck to paycheck.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:41
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raskalnikov_86 posted:This may come as a surprise to you, but some people value learning and self-enrichment over economic success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA
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Apr 22, 2016 21:38
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I got a BA in Philosophy as my first degree, then immediately turned around and jumped into a Bsc in Comp Sci. Unless you are going to go through the BA->MA (maybe optional) -> PhD route and then teach, of which there are few positions relatively, you would be better off doing something else, because there are no careers that follow out of this degree. That being said, it is a good pre-law degree if you think you might like to go to law school. Just... I know it's difficult to think about what you want to do after school for most people, but maybe think less about that, and more about what is actually available to you to do given a particular academic course.
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Apr 23, 2016 04:44
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