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Tequila Sunrise posted:Possible unpopular opinion incoming, but college doesn't have to be about getting a piece of paper that helps you get This Specific Job. I went to college knowing I wanted to study English Lit, fully aware that that I would get asked "What are you going to do with that?" five times a week. And I would tell people I didn't know. But I enjoyed studying it, I enjoyed my classes and my professors, and that helped me keep motivated to finish my degree in 4 years. It also was the program that got me started doing volunteer work, which led me to apply to the Peace Corps, and that experience helped me grow as a person and shaped my career path. It also is the reason I got the job I have now, and will all be valuable with me moving forward career-wise. Might be an unpopular opinion; I think it's a totally correct opinion because it's been my experience as well. My undergrad is in philosophy. Firstly, studying philosophy helped me develop two skills that I use every day in my current job as a midwife: critical thinking skills (very useful when making a diagnosis, for example) and the ability to explain complicated concepts very simply. Second, studying philosophy made me a better and more interesting person because I learned how to really think carefully about issues that are fundamental to the human experience. I'm a better citizen, a better partner, a better friend, and a better colleague because I have a philosophy degree. Last, studying philosophy was really fun and interesting and I got to spend four years doing something awesome with smart, awesome people. Of my graduating class, the most common occupations seem to be media, academia and the law. Of the folks I've stayed in touch with personally, one (my spouse) is an environmental scientist, one is a business consultant, one is a tattoo artist, several are government bureaucrats, one is an editor at Buzzfeed, two more are print journalists, one is a nurse, one has a web design company, and one is in politics. There's no "philosopher" job for which an undergraduate degree in philosophy prepares you. Rather, a degree in philosophy, if you do it right (i.e. you do it at a school where the professors and your fellow students are really smart and interesting and you work really really hard) puts you in touch with a bunch of cool people who go on to do cool stuff, teaches you how to think well and be an interesting person, and gives you a good foundation for future training. I would be a much shittier midwife if I hadn't studied philosophy (and actually would probably not be a midwife at all since what sparked my interest in midwifery was taking a bunch of bioethics courses and writing lots of papers on pregnancy from a bioethics standpoint). I also don't agree that Thesaurus posted:something with more cachet is necessarily better. You never know how a particular field of study will be perceived. When I was interviewing for residency a lot of practice groups were really interested that I had studied philosophy instead of the usual round of pre-med whatever. Dogfish fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 05:14
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:It doesn't have to be but unless you are so remote from the very possibility of financial hardship that you can just casually blow tens of thousands of dollars on a fun hobby at 20 it should at least be a significant concern, and you should strive to have a concrete plan for your post-college life that doesn't involve you making money. Peace Corps isn't a bad one, though it's getting a lot harder to get into from what I can tell My parents kicked in 50% of my expenses for my undergrad and I paid for the rest with scholarships and working three jobs. I went to school in Canada where tuition is cheaper than the States, but the average student debt here is still ~$30 000. $30K of debt over ten years is very doable if you're making $25-$30K, which is a reasonable expectation for someone just out of school even if you don't go on to do professional training and get a high-paying job. Most of my friends who went into the work force right after school ended up working in journalism/media or as bureaucrats, for example, and that's definitely less than they were making. Yes, do not go into $70K of debt for a philosophy degree. That is to say, if you can't figure out how to study philosophy for a reasonable amount of money, don't. Learning to be a good critical thinker and developing excellent communication skills (among all the other benefits of a liberal arts education) is not just "a fun hobby." It's skill-building that helps you be a better professional and a better person. Of course nobody should treat university like adult summer camp (at least not all the time). But the habit of casually denigrating the "soft skills" people get from liberal arts degrees is really frustrating to me because it's so narrow-minded and short-sighted.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:46
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Tequila Sunrise posted:Those soft skills really are important to being a well rounded person, but it is pretty hard to gauge as an employer. From a resume and a thirty-minute interview it's pretty difficult to tell what kind of analytical and critical thinking skills some dude with a double major in Philosophy/Psychology has, and if he'd be a good fit for this job. Whereas someone with a degree in Technical Writing and a Communications minor is probably going to know how to at least format a basic document. Well, for me, one of the main objectives of granting a degree in philosophy is that an employer should know that anyone who holds that degree has demonstrated high levels of competence in critical and analytical thinking, written communication, etc. In the same way that I expect someone with a nursing degree to know how to change a wound dressing, I expect someone with a philosophy degree to reason well from first principles and write a clear and concise argument. I get that in practice that's not always the case (and I think there's an excellent case to be made for reform of the liberal arts, especially where grade inflation, etc is concerned) but this is a problem that I think is grounded in bad educational practice rather than in choice of major. A Wizard of Goatse posted:I graduated with a lit BA and it actually seriously loving sucked, killed all joy to be found in the topic, and wasted years of my life I'll never get back. I spent some time at a top-tier college before running out of money and that was cool as hell, but it was cool as hell no matter what subject I tried there because good teachers and a good academic environment can make any subject thrilling and enriching to someone who has a little intellectual curiosity. The important thing here is 'go to a good school', not whether the name of your major is flowery and poetic enough to soothe your artist's soul. I'm not sure who the "you" is in this post, but on the off-chance it's me (since my last post is close to yours): 1. Yes, you're right. Going to a good school is much better than not going to a good school, and you can very quickly lose all interest in and passion for a subject if it's taught poorly. I definitely would not advise going to a bad school over going to a good one, in the same way that I wouldn't advise overpaying for a degree. 2. I specifically DID get some things in particular from my degree in philosophy that I'm not sure I would have gotten otherwise. Here's why I think that: I completed my midwifery training at one of the best-regarded medical schools in Canada. It was a very competitive program and all my colleagues from STEM backgrounds were really smart, had excellent grades from their undergrads, and were hard workers. I was not and am not smarter than they are. But I consistently had a much easier time making diagnoses, assimilating skills, understanding the "big picture" of clinical practice, and doing patient education than they did. I was the only one who had studied philosophy, and I was consciously and consistently using the skills I had learned during that study. The other students who had a liberal arts background also did better than the ones with a hard science background because what liberal arts education teaches you is how to think clearly and with flexibility, how to understand the scope and context of a problem, and how to clearly formulate and communicate thought. The STEM students had a much easier time passing exams in the life sciences classes (except Pharmacology, which was incredibly difficult for everyone) but a more difficult time translating that knowledge into practice. I'm just talking about my experience here; of course it's not universal. You'll have great communicators who will be great no matter what educational path they choose, and you'll have people who no amount of schooling could teach to utter a coherent thought. But I do know that I use the skills I learned studying philosophy literally every day in clinical practice when I make a diagnosis, give report, or explain a procedure or test to a patient. I don't think everyone should study philosophy. But I think folks who are interested in it will have a great time with the subject matter (if they're truly interested in it and if it's taught well, of course) AND acquire some really valuable skills.
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Dec 2, 2015 21:35
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Tequila Sunrise posted:I have to disagree with you on this. The truth is, oftentimes a degree really doesn't mean anything. I spent my Junior year of college working in my school's Writing Center, which was mostly for students to come get help with their papers for classes. A lot of times the papers were good and students just wanted an outside opinion, but just as often the papers were complete garbage. And I don't just mean Freshman STEM majors who were forced to take Comp 101 just bullshitting papers, I mean Senior English Lit students who still didn't even know how to cite sources correctly. Thesis statements that were things like 'This author helped change the way we view society'. I do agree with you that that's the case in practice, i.e. that graduation requirements now reflect more (or less, depending on how you look at it) than competence in the field of study. I also used to work with the writing centre at my university and can't even count the number of first-year (or second- or third-year) philosophy papers I saw that began with "Since the dawn of time, man has..." and then meandered around for five or so pages. I think it is worth noting, though, that although this is more common in liberal arts, STEM students aren't immune. But I do think it's more prevalent in the liberal arts because I think we've actually gotten pretty bad at teaching the liberal arts as it moves further and further away from being a core part of university curricula (for a whole raft of reasons, most of which are pretty unfortunate). The idea of defined goals for successful completion used to be fundamental to liberal arts education, and one SHOULD in fact be able to look at a CV, see a philosophy degree on there, and be confident that the person in question can deliver a good argument. But yes, I agree that this isn't currently the case. What does frustrate me is seeing how many folks hold that up as an example of the inherent worthlessness of the discipline, rather than recognizing that it's that very attitude that actually contributes to standards slipping because liberal arts education is in general devalued within the academic system. Basically the university education system in North America is in crisis and that's strongly felt in the liberal arts, is what I'm saying. A Wizard of Goatse posted:I feel like 'a BA in philosophy proves you're a deep critical thinker' is operating on about the level of 'if you get an MBA you will have to work in a cubicle 70 hours a week for the rest of your life'. This is what happens to some people, where their route in life took them to an exceptional noteworthy place, but even if that's what you're after it has just about fuckall to do with your choice in major. What these other concentrations - nursing, business, engineering, underwater basketweaving - distinguish themselves by is a core set of definable, standard competencies vetted to a basic standard of QC, rather than handwavy hot air about just being a better thinker, y'know, at thinky stuff. I don't know in what field you currently work but I can tell you in medicine it's scary how many people actually can't critically think through a problem. That's not handwavy "thinky stuff." Learning how to tease out the important parts of a problem and clearly and logically work through a solution from the beginning to the end, then clearly communicate that to someone else is a teachable skill with defined methods and measurable results. The "well you could just read some books" argument is also really weird to me. Anyone could, in theory, teach themselves anything from books. Teaching philosophy isn't actually about reading the books, it's about having people who are smart and know what they're talking about teach you how to tease out the ideas within those books. To expand on your nursing example, you can quite easily learn to read a medical chart online. What you can't learn online is how to recognize when a patient isn't well and a change needs to be made to their plan of care. You have to see a lot of patients for that and be shown by a preceptor how to recognize the signs that it's time to call the doctor in. Similarly, you can read any book you care to, but learning how to integrate its ideas into a system of thought, work with them, and communicate them well is something that needs to be taught for most people. Dogfish fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 14:49
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silence_kit posted:I'm not the first person in this thread to talk about this, but it isn't like a philosophy or other liberal arts degree is the only way to become proficient in reasoning. Getting a liberal arts degree also isn't a guarantee that you'll learn how to systematically think through things after your four years are up, so it is difficult to recommend these degrees on the basis of "picking up useful skills for future careers." This is another argument that I find consistently puzzling. Of course not all philosophy graduates will be good at what they studied. Neither will all graduates from any other field. Of course formal university education in one discipline is not the only way to acquire a certain set of skills. That's true for all fields of study. Literally the only point I have made in this thread is that it's possible to learn some really useful stuff from philosophy education, which will serve you well in the future, in much the same way that it's possible to learn really useful stuff which will serve you well in the future from other fields of study. If you want to talk about how tertiary education in general has some real quality issues to address in all aspects of its structure, I'm happy to have that conversation, because it's true. But the point I'm specifically making is that the claim that liberal arts in general, and philosophy in particular, are less useful and teach fewer important skills than STEM education, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. All philosophy education doesn't have to be excellent and all philosophy graduates don't have to be productive and well-trained for that to be correct.
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Dec 12, 2015 18:53
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