Philosophy Department Survival Strategies: Local Student Recruitment
Some readers have noticed the alarming frequency with which posts in the category of “Cuts and Threats to Philosophy Programs” appear here. Given the current political winds, there might be more cuts coming. What can philosophy departments do to improve their chances of survival?
This is the first in a series of occasional posts on “Philosophy Department Survival Strategies.” Each will focus on a different kind of strategy, with the hope of soliciting from readers examples of, and advice for, pursuing that strategy. (If you have a strategy you’d like me to post about, please email me about it.)
As with many goals, protecting your philosophy department is unlikely to be achievable at the last minute; rather, it involves a fair amount of work and the employment of strategies that may (like the one under consideration in this post) take a lot of time—in some cases, many years—to bear fruit.
The strategy to be discussed here is the recruitment of philosophy majors from high schools not too far from your college or university.
Why is this important?
A question schools (and their consultants) are asking when looking over budgets for programs to cut is: “what’s the marginal value of this program ?” And one factor that sometimes appears to go into answering this question is the number of students who come to the college or university intending to study what that program offers.
The thought seems to be that, roughly, if a university cuts the philosophy program, the cost to the university should be understood in part as a function of the number of students who now won’t apply to or attend the university because it no longer offers the opportunity to major in philosophy.
Looking at the number of philosophy majors a department ends up granting degrees to each year isn’t much of an indicator of that, since those students might have majored in something else had philosophy not been an option. Nor is the number of students enrolled in philosophy courses a suitable indicator, since course enrollments are a function of requirements and offerings, both of which could be changed. This is not to say that degrees granted and enrollments aren’t important for a department’s survival; it’s just not what we’re focused on today.
Of course, number of incoming declared majors is an imperfect and incomplete metric, too. But since it is sometimes factored in, it’s worth figuring out how philosophy departments can do better by it.
As we all know, philosophy is at a bit of comparative disadvantage on this metric. Most students applying to college are unfamiliar with philosophy, since most of them have never taken a philosophy course or a course with an extended unit on something identified to them as philosophy (contrast this with history or math). Nor is there a popular conception of philosophy that might compensate for its absence in their education thus far (contrast this with engineering or business). Having this obstacle of unfamiliarity to overcome, philosophers have more work cut out for them when it comes to prospective undergraduate recruitment.
Many colleges and universities draw students heavily from their city or region. Bringing philosophy to those local pre-college students could make sense as an approach to this problem for philosophy departments at such schools.
Last summer, Alex Guerrero (Rutgers) made the case for an advanced placement (AP) philosophy course and the creation of philosophy essay contests for high schoolers. These are good ideas, but weren’t intended as advice for individual departments (they can’t on their own create an AP course, though they could have essay contests with scholarships as prizes).
Towards the end of last year, Tushar Irani (Wesleyan) detailed how he has developed and taught a dual-enrollment philosophy course for high school students, and something like that is indeed a possibility for many departments.
What are some other options for philosophy departments interested in reaching local/regional high school students? What have you or others in your department tried? How did you implement them? How did they go? Maybe you haven’t tried an idea out but think it might work: share!
Guest lessons, philosophy clubs, camps, ethics bowl competitions might be among the suggestions (along with other ideas, I hope); providing details about them and your assessment of their effectiveness would be useful to other readers. Also of interest is how much departmental support or institutional support these efforts had, and how responsibility for them was handled.
Related: Philosophy Departments Under Threat: Information, Pro-Active Strategies, Defense
Dual enrollment programs are terrific. We have one in logic, which allows high school students to learn basic propositional logic and earn 3-credits from Siena. We are hoping to expand the program. We are also trying to connect our philosophy club to high school philosophy clubs in the capital region. An push by the APA to lobby for an AP-philosophy class would be terrific. I went to an IB-high school in the late 80s and early 90s, and took both epistemology and aesthetics in high school.
The Teaching Hub session happening online TOMORROW (10-11:40am CT) at the Central APA seems relevant to this
It’s on Summer Programs at high schools.
There’s also one in a couple of hours (5–6:40pm CT) about high school philosophy programs more generally.
Both sessions are co-organized by PLATO: Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization.
we teach a high school class locally, but it doesnt actually feed our campus. most of those students are strivers who are trying to get into more elite places! but the side benefit is that it gets additional work for our adjuncts.
The more philosophy cross-pollinates the better. New majors like:
Analytical Political Economy
History and Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences
Management with a certificate in Organizational Ethics
Analytical Journalism
Human-Centered Computing
Engineering with a graduate certificate in Analytical Communication
Do not be afraid to reach into the trades and community college programs. Philosophy can be very elitist but clear communication, critical thinking and historical context benefit every one in every job.
Philosophy departments should also consider building relationships with employers, placing students into internships and co-ops, and starting university publishing houses (however modest).
These kinds of things matter to raising any department’s reputation. Philosophy seems so insular from the outside. Marketing and outreach is how we demonstrate relevancy.
Honest question. Is it even ethical to try to attract prospective grad students to philosophy programs, given that many schools do not provide even a living wage, that more and more teaching is being done by contract workers, that departments around the world are getting axed, leaving an already hyper-competitive job market even more saturated with qualified candidates, and given that higher education is under attack in the States?
This post is about undergraduate philosophy majors, not graduate students.
(For my view about the topic you raise, see this, and feel free to comment there.)
I appreciate this, but I think my question remains valid. If someone goes through for a philosophy major for their undergraduate degree, their goal in doing so may very well be to become a professional philosopher, and that means pursuing graduate studies. This was certainly the case for me. And I suspect I am far from alone.
So again, is it ethical to try to attract even undergraduate students to major in our programs? As someone who thinks there is value in studying philosophy even if that doesn’t turn into a career, I want the answer to my question to be “yes.” But I’m struggling to land on an answer.
Charles, I’d appreciate keeping the comments on this post about the specific topic of this post. When a comments section gets derailed it deters valuable contributions from others. Perhaps we can have a discussion about your question another time. Thank you for understanding.
Sounds good
Probably about <5% of philosophy undergrads at my R1 institution are thinking about becoming professors.
The vast majority of undergrad phil majors go into something other than phil grad school.
Equally well, if someone goes through for a philosophy major for their undergraduate degree, their goal in doing so may very well be to have philosophical perspective on the many things they do over the course of their life. Given this possibility, is it ethical *not* to try to recruit them?
(I don’t mean that as a serious argument. My point is just to show that mere possibility isn’t anywhere near sufficient to get this sort of ethical argument off the ground. My personal view is that if it’s ethical to even teach an undergraduate philosophy class, then it is likely ethical to encourage students with appropriate interests to major in it, though some people might read this as a tollens rather than a ponens.)
In my experience, most philosophy undergrads want to become lawyers. I was only one of 2 majors in my class who went to grad school in philosophy, while half a dozen or more went to law school. (Law was originally my plan too, but I realized it probably wasn’t for me.)
My department (UW, Seattle) has a pretty robust P4C program, which I expect helps with recruitment. I haven’t been directly involved, though I try to be supportive of grad students who are.
One other thought: I also think recruitment can work through what our students say to their siblings, and people in their hometowns (especially if they come from places where many people are suspicious of humanities/social sciences). I’d be curious to hear if any departments have explored that angle – e.g., “Here’s what to tell your family about why you’re studying philosophy.”
One thing that might prove attractive is if we could tell prospective philosophy students and their parents, in all truthfulness, that the students will encounter more and different interpretive casts of mind in their philosophy courses than the currently-overwhelmingly-typical progressive liberal bourgeois one.
In my experience, there is a real hunger in young people for guided philosophical explorations of genuinely heterogeneous views about cultural issues, and about certain issues often seen as exceeding the purview of polite liberalism, such as the family, the sacred, tradition, marriage, fidelity to the local, sexual liberation, homemaking and whether and in what respect entering the market is liberating, etc. These are things that are close to home but that popular culture tends to depict in only one way — a way that, let’s face it, tends also to be the default in academic philosophy too, more or less implicitly shaping syllabi, discussions, assignments, faculty hires, and so on.
I realize this is not concrete advice. But it is something we can do to “reach local/regional high school students.”
Sorry to “shoot down” the idea, but if AP Latin courses or AP Physics courses in high school (or AP Spanish or French courses, etc.) cannot save college departments and programs in these fields, why would anyone think AP Philosophy courses in high school could save philosophy programs or majors? The actual effect of AP Philosophy high school courses may well be the opposite. It may provide students a way to satisfy their college core philosophy requirement (if the college has one) without actually taking any philosophy courses while in college. Those few students who do desire to take further courses in philosophy once they get to college will be in a similar situation to students who want to pursue Latin, Physics, French, etc., studies. They will be taught largely by adjuncts and will have to be content with a Minor in these subjects unless they attend an elite SLAC or an R1 institution.
Good question, I hope someone answers it!
Just because AP Exams didn’t make department closures empirically impossible does not mean that didn’t help (i.e. slow) closures on the market. I don’t know what the overall effect is (positive or negative) but it is an empirical question for which I can easily see arguments on both sides (cannibalizing intro classes vs. greater exposure and inspiring majors).
I vaguely remembered a report by the American Physical Society that is germane to the question, and I’m pretty sure this is it. There doesn’t seem to be enough information to isolate the effect of AP Physics, but most physics majors (72%) get their first exposure from high-school courses. That said the only significant factor they found between majors and non-majors (if I am reading the report right) is expected grade.
I think there are factors that are significant for particular sub-populations.
That said Perplexity pulled up this study which suggests AP Exams encourage majors from students who do well on the exam. From the abstract:
I am not a statistician and I am looking at these studies much at all right now, but it seems to me that there’s reason to believe a philosophy AP Exam would be positive for getting majors and given the rarity at which philosophy courses per se are requirements, I doubt the cannibalization worry is too great. (Humanities requirements are already cannibalized by AP History, Literature, etc.)
As anecdote, I’ll add that I took a philosophy class in highschool, which lead to me choosing philosophy classes to fill my distribution requirements, which lead to me changing majors and eventually becoming a philosopher.
“Save” is different from “increase interest in”.
In the case of Classics, there are very strong headwinds against the field generally, so an increase in interest against a general decline might not be visible.
In the case of physics, there’s a different structural issue – there’s a large number of degree programs that already require students to take one physics class, and AP physics can count for that. So although AP physics might make people more likely to get interested in majoring in physics, this effect might be overwhelmed by the enrollment effect of people who are already sure they want to major in chemistry or biology or business or whatever getting their one required physics class out of the way in high school, thus cutting enrollment.
Currently, there are very few university degree requirements that can be satisfied by a philosophy class, that would likely be satisfied by an AP class. (Catholic universities with an explicit philosophy requirement might be an exception. At non-Catholic institutions, the only general degree requirements that might involve a philosophy class are a math requirement that sends some students to logic, and a writing requirement that can be satisfied by many humanities classes but likely wouldn’t be substituted by an AP.)
I agree it is an empirical question whether AP courses would prove counter-productive to recruiting majors. With Latin, French, Spanish, Physics, etc., however, we are not talking just about AP courses, but about regular high school courses which acquaint students with these subjects, sometimes (in the case of languages) over years of study. Consider also that the internet has exposed Philosophy to more young people than ever, so those with the predilection for it can now easily acquaint themselves with it in a fairly serious way. Despite all of this student acquaintance with the subject matter, Philosophy major programs (also Latin, French, etc.) remain targets for elimination at regional universities. In a twist to the proposals made by others, I might suggest we lobby for Philosophy to be taught in U.S. high schools so that the many Philosophy PhDs who are unlikely to ever have tenured college appointments can at least find full-time teaching work in these high schools.
I’ve been saying this for years. And in my rather limited experience in Pennsylvania, Montana, and central Europe, there’s a non-trivial amount of interest in getting some pretty sophisticated philosophical instruction into high school programs, even if only at a volunteer level. The trick is to turn that interest into established programs. But between the huge number of un- and under-employed PhD’s in philosophy today, and the lack of quality philosophical instruction for young people in pre-college schooling, it seems like this is one intervention the profession ought to be doing more toward implementing.
This strategy is ‘zero sum’, in that it redistributes cuts from philosophy to other departments.
A positive sum strategy would be to figure out how philosophers can add more value outside of academia. For example, finding ways to use logic, philosophy of mind, and ethics to do management consulting; or creating an investment fund focused on long-term speculative analysis; or do applied ethics that improves corporate governance etc. Then build partnerships between academic departments and companies or government that brings in outside revenue.
I agree that it is but the marginal value of an additional student is a lot more for philosophy than it is for much larger majors at some institutions. Maybe the hope is that students who would study philosophy would have studied psych, bio, comms, poli sci or whatnot instead. These programs will do well regardless.
High school classes can be valuable, but they typically aren’t great for recruitment, and so their primary effect is to squash Gen Ed numbers. Given that philosophy is tiny anyway, it might be worth it just to promote general awareness of philosophy. But the kids taking early college because they’re ambitious are using your course to get into a better school.