Teaching the Practical Value of Philosophy
Philosophy departments tout the practical, transferrable skills of philosophy majors that will help them succeed in a wide range of careers: critical thinking, clear communication, creativity, identifying questions and problems. Yet, as Jonathan Webber (Cardiff) puts it, “philosophy students often struggle to see how the work they do cultivates these abilities.”
Consequently, “they can find it difficult to articulate the value their degree provides for the careers they want to enter. As a result, employers won’t always detect the contributions these candidates can make.”
Marcel Duchamp, “In Advance of the Broken Arm”
So the questions arise: What are philosophy departments doing to teach their students about the practicality and transferability of the skills they’ve developed while studying philosophy? And what should they be doing?
In an article at Times Higher Education, Professor Webber discusses how his department at Cardiff has approached the problem. He writes:
The solution is to embed this understanding into the curriculum itself. It cannot just be described to students in the abstract in occasional talks or documents. It needs to be something they experience directly themselves. Only this can allow them to see clearly what their philosophical knowledge and skills can do in the world beyond the campus.
In their BA and MA programs, he says, there is added theme of “the usefulness of philosophising in working together to address problems that we face collectively as organisations and as a society.” He notes that this theme “does not displace the content usually found in philosophy degree programmes at UK universities.” Rather it adds to students’ understanding of the relevance of their philosophical work “to whatever careers they might want to pursue.”
Here’s one example of a curricular change they’ve implemented:
In our new bachelor’s degrees, all final-year students must complete a group project that recommends a specific policy or strategy for government or a large organisation. These reports draw on philosophical analyses and debates in relation to an issue of societal concern. Students must also collaborate to present this report verbally.
What are other ways of teaching philosophy students about the practicality of their philosophical skills? What curricular or extra curricular programs have been or might be useful here? Have you had particular success in doing this with “experiential learning” assignments or courses? Have any philosophy departments had success with internship programs for their students? Have you brought in former majors now successful in industry to advise your current students?
Please tell us about your experiences and ideas in this regard. Thanks.
Related:
“The Benefits of Studying Philosophy: Not Just Selection Effects?”
“Philosophy Majors & High Standardized Test Scores: Not Just Correlation”
“What the Evidence Says about whether Studying Philosophy Makes People Better Thinkers“
“Philosophy departments tout the practical, transferable skills of philosophy majors that will help them succeed in a wide range of careers: critical thinking, clear communication, creativity, identifying questions and problems.”
One issue is that any applicant can claim to have these highly transferable skills, too. I assume most applicants do claim to have these skills if they are mentioned in the job ad. But if the employer has no clue about philosophy, how will they know that philosophers are especially good at the things every applicant is claiming to do well? Of course, you can tell them in your cover letter. But how much of your 1-2 pages do you devote to convincing an employer that philosophers do it better? And how much does the employer want to hear it, really?
I suppose the cover letter as a whole provides evidence of clear communication. As for critical thinking, if you TA-ed or taught critical thinking or logic during your graduate years, you might explicitly point that out in your cover letter and resume.
Clear cover letters can now be written by AI, so any advantage there is wiped out.
I don’t think there’s much differentiation between undergraduate degrees so I’m surprised this is much of a problem. I would have assumed the issue is students not choosing the major bc it’s not employable. However I think it’s much more challenging for graduate degrees in philosophy but the Thesis Whisperer has some good resources for general PhDs to pitch themselves outside academia.
As an ex-academic now working for the UK government, the amount of things I’ve learnt from philosophy has confirmed that the stuff we used to say on open days really was true.
Not just a set of ‘critical thinking skills’, but a bunch of practical insights about e.g.
-> empricism and common-sense (should everything be ‘data-driven’ or do we use subject matter experts’ judgements as priors that we update in light of?)
-> the philosophy of action (‘does this plan allow everyone to act under the guise of the good?’) or
-> formal-epistemology (can we model this problem using a Bayes-net which we update as new information comes in?)
Besides the critical thinking skills and the practical insights, I think the cultural bits of philosophy [at its best, in the circles in which I moved] are incredibly useful.
-> The idea that we use questions as a way of learning from each other, and not tearing each other down or simply advertising our own views, is really useful.
-> The idea that some questions are really hard and admitting ignorance is not shameful, but in fact a pre-condition for getting better answers, is really useful.
-> The idea that it’s normal to talk through ideas with other people, and test stuff out before you make a decision, is really useful.
I take great pride in the critical thinking course I have shaped and reshaped over 10+ years, where a key aim is to teach philosophical skills and apply them in many arenas. “Critical thinking” used to be sneered at as “not real philosophy” but things have changed. Perhaps now is the time to start making the course (with the applicability aim) an essential part of the philosophy major.
Hey,
I’m trying to develop a course on thinking myself, so I’d be interested in seeing your course if you’re okay with sharing it. I think my name here links to my website and my email is the full name at gmail, if you want to write to me there.
thanks,
Pranay
I wish we lived in a world where “practical” meant more than “lucrative”, and people were free to pursue projects out of passion and interest rather than because they need someone to buy their labor.
Counterpoint: ‘practical’ can also mean beneficial to others. Focusing overmuch on passion and interest (as many young people are wont to do) can be too self-centered.
So when considering the practicality of a philosophy BA, one might ask how that degree does not merely scratch an itch that a curious (if not sometimes ponderous) young person has, but also equips them to make a positive difference in the world after school.
Conceptual understanding and their potential practical applications is a relatively slow process that cannot be ‘ predigested ‘. A student of Anatomy may know early enough ‘ applications in Surgery ‘. Decision making can be better in those with philosophy background, as may the case with Logic.
It seems odd to claim that philosophy teaches students transferable skills and then claim that without “direct experience” of this students can’t make the leap to stating that point in interviews. That feels like it undermines the claim made.
I’ve managed a lot of people in my time, with a range of degrees and have no confidence that anything resembling subject-specific styles of thinking are imprinted on graduates. I’ve met brilliant people with non-philosophy backgrounds and awful reasoners with philosophy degrees. There’s no correlation in my experience.
Realistically, the typical graduate forgets most of the substance of what they studied within weeks (ask them to explain the doctrine of double effect and the concept of an action being intentional under a description and they would fail).
Teaching them the arguments to make in an interview about how philosophy has taught them critical thinking is eminently sensible but those arguments are being made by those who studied history, law, physics, literature… Professional philosophers should remember that the typical undergraduate hasn’t taken from their degree what they took from theirs.
Would you say that these “awful reasoners with philosophy degrees” whom you managed forgot what they had learned during their studies, or never mastered the core competencies of their discipline and received a degree regardless?
This. Everybody is pitching themselves in interviews as critical thinkers, or if you’re in tech like me, “first principles” thinkers, ppl who can “tackle 0 to 1 problems” etc etc. Your philosophy major is meaningless in most of the job market as any kind of explicit signal to hirers (except hirers who have philosophy degrees), and no amount of pointing to the degree or talking in a cover letter about the crit thinking course you took (cover letter reader reactions “Yikes! Cringe! Red flag!”) will change that. But I don’t think “experiential learning” ideas are bad for philosophy undergrads, if only to give them self-confidence. I’m guessing they’ll tend to be hyper self critical, highly disgusted by the thought of “pitching” their transferrable skills, overly abstract in the way they think about their own competencies, that sort of thing. Having some experience in particular of hard decisionmaking in collab with others may reveal to them that their competencies are genuine and can (often) be just as good or better as those in the more economic arts. But. A big part of that experiential learning should also aim to reveal to said students that they suck at communicating to typical humans they’ll encounter post studies. Hopefully the response will be to improve on that. – Attorney and philosophy PhD.
At Purdue University, our Philosophy department offers students an 8-week course called Philosophy: What Can You Do With That? In this course, we begin by helping students think about what they might like to pursue after their bachelor’s degree based on their own interests and values. Then we talk about the skills that students are gaining in their degree, how to talk about and market those skills, how to prepare documents that highlight their experiences and the value that they can bring to a variety of professions/academic programs, and bring in guest speakers, each of who has a Philosophy B.A. or P.h.D that are working outside of academia to show the many different opportunities that are available to our students. We also help them identify, research, and apply to internships/research assistantships, so that they can see for themselves the value that they bring to these roles. The student response has been very positive and does seem to be making an impact on the students who choose to take the course.
This is an old, periodically resurrected, and dismally poor approach. Philosophy can teach students how to think clearly about philosophical questions, of course, and many students study it for their own personal reasons having to do with clarifying philosophical issues important to themselves. As far as employability goes, students should be encouraged to study philosophy together with another subject that will give them concrete and widely-acknowledged skills that don’t need special explanations to the non-philosophers who might hire them. Just a few examples: philosophy paired with a major in (1) a foreign language, (2) mathematics, (3) economics, (4) computer science. It is also worth noting that gaining skill in these subjects does not require “experiential learning.”
Beware of taking any advice about the non-academic applicability of a philosophy degree from people who haven’t worked outside of academia in years, possibly ever, and most likely never as a professional.
These people quite literally have no idea what they’re talking about; a lot of time–and I mean a lot–is spent on the job market apologizing for, excusing, explaining, and defending a philosophy PhD. You’re always selling; and always being undersold. It’s a battle. And most people–even at fancy places–want a ‘free thinker’ last.
This is boojie ideology promoted largely by people who haven’t had a non-academic job since selling shoes the summer after high school and now want to ensure their departments survive culling after dipping enrolments. Beware.
This is correct I think, though mostly for philosophy phds vs undergrads. More often than not, awkwardness and defensiveness ensue if the subject is brought up in any earnest. Ppl have diff ways of dealing with this. The most effective for me is mild self deprecatory humor. It’s almost never a point of pride (you usually are worried about having to defend against the possibility of being seen as arrogant and out of touch, so making it a point of pride explicitly is a bit insane). The only thing the PhD has done for me in my career is that it does *become* a signal for ppl who you already gain some trust with and who gravitate towards the sorts of intellectual values philosophy students strive you / are seen by some as striving for.
The University of Montana MA program embodies this idea. Our program focuses on environmental philosophy, requires that students complete an environment-related internship, and requires that students complete a Civic Engagement Project instead of a thesis. We really want our students to learn to apply their philosophical knowledge and analytical skills to real problems in the real world. Only a minority of our students will go on to pursue a Ph.D.: most of them will enter the job market upon graduation. One constant worry I try to address as the graduate advisor is that our students don’t know how to articulate the value of their training. They also don’t realize how important visibility and networking are. I try to focus on career readiness throughout the program.
At the undergrad level, most of my classes now include a civic engagement group project. It has worked very well. I recommend the Engaged Philosophy website to anybody interested in going in that direction.
https://www.engagedphilosophy.com/
To elaborate on the collab decisionmaking idea, here’s what I think I do daily that I think might be interesting for more career-minded philosophy undergrads. You add a part of a cast of, say, two dozen characters. You all have somewhat different roles and allegiances and functions within a company, as well as personal POVs and personalities etc. You’re faced with a question (often ill defined at first), and you have to contribute to a few decisionmakers making a decision on some issue. You have two weeks to get this done. Begin. Frame the issues well, navigate the varying POVs, navigate the escalation and decisionmaking process and the politics that surround that, exercise influence over others semi-rationally, negotiate and compromise on framing, solutions, POVs, etc etc etc. End of the project is a decisionmaking meeting where ppl present the decision, have a discussion, and make a decision in 30min.