This is the second installment in the occasional series, Philosophy Department Survival Strategies. The topic is how the number and types of philosophy courses affect the health of the philosophy major program.

What counts as a healthy philosophy major program will differ across universities, but it always involves attracting and retaining majors. The amount and variety of courses a philosophy department offers affects how well it does with these tasks, but the relationship isn’t that straightforward.

One line of thought is that there should be very many different courses, especially at the introductory level. Since students are unlikely to be familiar with philosophy, we can hook them into taking a philosophy course (or even hook them on philosophy) by pairing it with something they already know or care about. So we should offer a range of intro-level courses like “Philosophy and the Environment” or “Philosophy of Technology” or “Business Ethics” or “Philosophy of Food” or “Philosophy of Religion”, as well as some pandering courses like “Philosophy and Star Wars”, “Philosophy and Lord of the Rings,” etc., with many such courses to appeal to as many students as we can.

The many-courses approach may have its appeal beyond the introductory level, as a way of trying to make sure students are offered courses they’re interested in.

Is this a strategy your department has taken? If so, do you have any evidence to think it’s working? Let us know.

One philosophy professor at a large research university wrote to me to discuss the downsides of this approach. She says her department has struggled to attract and retain an adequate number of majors, and one reason might be the courses:

Part of the problem is that we have too many philosophy courses. There are several difficulties associated with having a vast array of courses. First, in a small program, that means many of the upper-level philosophy seminars will not fill. We’ve had seminars cancelled due to low enrollment over and over again. Not only is that disappointing for the students who enroll in them, but it occasionally even makes it difficult for majors to satisfy all the requirements for graduation. We’ve lost majors, that is, had students switch to other majors, simply because they’ve had too many philosophy seminars cancelled on them.

Her comments also raise another aspect of the health of a philosophy program: a sense of intellectual community among the students. She writes:

The other problem is that having a lot of philosophy courses means majors are spread across so many courses that they have little chance to develop a sense community with fellow philosophy majors. Loneliness, like depression more generally, is epidemic among college students. Fewer courses can help to combat that loneliness. It helps to create a sense of community not simply by ensuring that philosophy majors get to know one another, but also by ensuring that they have the same basic knowledge of the discipline so they can have productive discussions about the discipline both inside and outside of their classes. 

As for the idea of attracting students with topics they’re antecedently interested in, or with sexy-sounding or cutting-edge subjects, this professor suggests they could be covered in “regular faculty talks that are heavily promoted to attract new students to the discipline with the message that they too can take on such issues if they get the kind of rigorous analytical training that is offered by philosophy programs.” Professors could require students in their courses to attend some number of these talks over the term.

An additional aspect of curricular planning that should be considered here is course sequencing. This involves the offering of series of courses in which the each course develops knowledge and skills specifically relevant to doing well in the subsequent course in the series. Via these course sequences, students enrich their understanding of an area, and perhaps better recognize their own intellectual growth. It’s a different kind of use of a department’s teaching capacity, aiming more directly at greater depth than the breadth of the many-kinds-of-courses approach. It requires careful organization of the schedule, to make sure the right courses in the sequences are offered with the right frequency. How exactly does course sequencing affect major attraction and retention?

Besides course offerings, there’s the question of course requirements. Reflections on how changes to the number or types of courses required to major in philosophy at your institution affected the health of the philosophy major would be worth hearing.

Discussion welcome. Thanks.

(The first post in the series, last week, was about recruiting students from high schools in your area; comments on that post are still welcome. Because that comment thread was somewhat derailed, I kindly ask readers commenting on these posts to stick to the topic. If you don’t think the idea of helping philosophy programs survive is a good one, that’s fine, but you don’t need to tell us that here; these posts are not the place for that discussion.)