graduate programs
TagIn Philosophy Departments, More Women Faculty Means More Women Students Earning PhDs
Among U.S. philosophy departments with graduate programs, those with a higher proportion of women faculty award more PhDs to women students.
Placement Patterns in the UK Philosophy Job Market
“Who gets to teach at good philosophy departments in the UK?” That’s the question taken up in the following guest post* by Philip Schönegger, a graduate student in the St. Andrews and Stirling Graduate Programme in Philosophy who is working in ethics and experimental philosophy. (more…)
An Approach to Teacher Training in Philosophy Departments (guest post by Colin Heydt)
“This is not revolutionary stuff. But it is important. And it is stuff I wish I’d known about early in my teaching career.” (more…)
A Reputational Survey of Philosophy Programs Plotted Against Program Placement Data
To what extent does getting one’s PhD in philosophy from a program that does well in a reputational survey increase one’s chances of finding a permanent academic position? (more…)
Results from an Application Fee Experiment (guest post by Kevin Zollman)
Last year, the Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) announced that it had eliminated the fee for applying to its graduate programs. In the following guest post*, CMU’s Kevin Zollman reports on what his department has learned from the change so far. (more…)
University of Pennsylvania Philosophy Stops Requiring the GRE
The Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania has decided to, at least temporarily, stop requiring applicants to its PhD program to submit GRE scores, and not take them into account even if included in applications. (more…)
Student Discouraged by Sectarian and Defeatist Professors
A recent college graduate who finished near the top of his class wrote to me last year to share a problem he was having with the professors in the small philosophy department at the college he attended: disagreement over which graduate programs in philosophy to apply to. (more…)
Luck and Precursive Belief (guest post by Amy Olberding)
“I was lucky. There were multiple joints in this path where things could well have gone sideways. Indeed, sideways was my more natural trajectory and temperament. But my luck, I hasten to say, was not just dumb luck. Instead, much of my luck was given to me by others.” (more…)
Philosophical Gourmet Report 2017-18 Released
The 2017-18 edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a ranking of the reputation of Ph.D. programs in philosophy, has been published. (more…)
Update to APDA’s Survey of Graduate Programs in Philosophy
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA) has updated its philosophy graduate program survey infogram with more recent information and comments. (more…)
NYU and Pitt To Waive PhD Application Fees For Some Students
The philosophy departments at New York University and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) at Pittsburgh, will be waiving the fee for applications to their PhD programs for some students. (more…)
Philosophy Graduate Programs: Does “Reputation” Track Placement Rates? (guest post)
The following is a guest post* by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), Pablo Contreras Kallens (UC Merced), and Justin Vlasits (Tübingen), in which they look at the extent to which data collected about graduate programs in philosophy by the Academic Placement Data and Analysis project (APDA) correlate with the reputational rankings of the Philosophical Gourmet Report..
Questions & Suggestions for the New PGR Editors
Work for the next edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a reputational ranking of doctoral programs in philosophy, is underway, with recent requests for updates to faculty lists. Since this edition of the PGR will be the first headed by its new editorial team—Berit Brogaard (Miami) and Christopher Pynes (Western Illinois)—it is a good time to seek i..
Carnegie Mellon Philosophy Eliminates Application Fee (guest post by Kevin Zollman)
The Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has eliminated the fee for applying to its graduate programs. Below is a guest post* by Kevin Zollman, associate professor of philosophy at CMU and the philosophy department’s director of graduate studies, explaining the rationale for this change. (more…)
Does Philosophy Fit Trend of Decrease in Humanities PhD Applications?
From 2010 to 2015 there was, on average, a 3% annual decrease in the number of applicants to doctoral programs, and in 2015-2016 there was a 7.1% decrease, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporting on data published by the Council of Graduate Schools. (more…)
Philosophy PhD Program Ratings by Former Students, Placement Data, and Diversity Profiles
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project aimed at gathering placement and other data about graduate programs in philosophy, has created some tables presenting some of the information they’ve obtained. (more…)
A Suggestion Regarding PGR Updates
The Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a ranking of many philosophy PhD programs based on an opinion survey about the quality of their faculty, is currently collecting details on the lists of faculty to be evaluated. (more…)
Stats Courses For Philosophers (guest post by Joshua Knobe)
The following is a guest post* by Joshua Knobe, professor of philosophy and psychology at Yale University. It first appeared at The Brains Blog, and follows up on post from a year ago by Knobe here at Daily Nous, “Formal Methods Training for Philosophy Graduate Students.”
Student Loans for Graduate Study in Philosophy: a Poll
Don’t get a PhD in philosophy if you have to pay for it.
That is standard advice for those considering doctoral study in philosophy. An inability to obtain a funded position as a PhD student might be evidence (early and incomplete evidence, of course) of one’s later prospects; jobs are hard to come by, and even if you end up employed in a way directly related to ..
Prestige Segregation by Gender in Philosophy
The distribution of genders in graduate education in the United States vary by field. Does that distribution change at all when the focus is just on the most prestigious graduate programs? A new study by Kim A. Weeden (Cornell), Sarah Thébaud (UC Santa Barbara), and Dafna Gelbgiser (Cornell), “Degrees of Difference: Gender Segregation of U.S. Doctorates by Field and..
Grad Students: What Would You Tell Your Fellow Students, But Can’t?
First we asked what graduate students would like to say to their professors, but felt like they couldn’t. Then we asked what professors would like to say to graduate students, but couldn’t. Less for the sake of exploring all of the available logical space (but of course partly for that) and more because it was requested and might be of some use, we shall now take up..
Philosophy Placement Data: An Update on APDA
Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and headed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), aims “to make information on academic job placement useful to prospective graduate students in philosophy.” The project has just been updated to include new data, which Professor Jennings describes in a post ..
Grad Students: What Do You Wish You Knew?
It’s the start of the academic year,and for some people, the start of their graduate education in philosophy. Graduate students are getting oriented in their programs, and graduate programs are orientating their students. Are they doing a good job of it? (more…)
When Personal Statement Instructions Differ
A student who is applying for admission to PhD programs in philosophy has noticed that at some universities, what the university’s graduate school asks applicants to include in their personal statements differs from what the same university’s philosophy department asks applicants to include. (more…)
Applying To Programs That Previously Rejected You
A reader writes in with a question about applying to graduate programs in philosophy:
I applied to several Masters programs and PhD programs in philosophy last year, and got into a Masters program. I was wondering if you and/or your readers could answer the following question for me: when it comes time for me to apply to PhD programs again, is it alright for me t..
Guide to Graduate Study in Aesthetics
The American Society for Aesthetics (ASA) has released the fourth edition of its Guide to Graduate Aesthetics in North America.Â
Duties to Graduate Students Pursuing Non-Academic Careers (guest post by Torsten Menge)
The following is a guest post by Torsten Menge, a recent philosophy PhD from Georgetown who currently works for Connected Academics, a national Mellon-funded project by the Modern Language Association (MLA) aimed at preparing humanities doctoral students for non-academic careers. (more…)
Our Duties to Actual and Possible Graduate Students (guest post by Sergio Tenenbaum)
The following is a guest post* by Sergio Tenenbaum, Professor of Philosophy at University of Toronto, on what philosophy departments owe graduate students in light of how difficult it is for them to find secure employment in philosophy.