By Michael A. Deere
Philosophy Department

I often joke with my students that the discipline of philosophy is perhaps the only one in which a living is made off of not knowing the answers to the questions that we pose.  Philosophers excel at not knowing.  One need only mark Socrates on this score: The wisdom that is distinctly human, the wisdom that marks out the space of humanity, is a profound ignorance concerning the origin, nature, and foundation of things.  Even Socrates knew that not knowing is what philosophers know better than anyone.  Didn’t Aristotle enshrine this ignorance as the condition of philosophical beginning?  He called it “wonder,” which sounds far better than “ignorance,” but it amounts to roughly the same thing.  It is a strange description: Philosophers stand in wonder before their own (quite human) ignorance regarding nearly everything.  I say “nearly everything” because we should at least be aware of our ignorance, and that, after all, must count for something.

Philosophy is a hard sell.  It offers uncertainty, doubt, and ignorance.  Its questions are those that any child can (and usually does) ask, and yet the answers that philosophy provides to such simple questions are fiendishly complex, often abstract, and highly questionable.  Philosophy cannot help you repair cars, bodies, governments, or financial markets.  It lacks the comfort and appeal of more career-focused disciplines, and philosophy will likely not solve the major problems of the day.  Not only that, but the ignorance that philosophy cultivates has always been a dangerous and disturbing thing.  It is an ignorance with teeth; it attacks, stealing away the certainties and truths that others take for granted.  It is little wonder that Socrates was condemned in public as one who turned things upside down, made the weaker arguments the stronger, and convinced others that absurdities and fantasies were more real than the obvious and solid reality before their eyes.  Aristophanes’ parody is not an attack on Socrates.  It is a defense, through ridicule, of the need to preserve our common-sense assumptions and familiar certainties.  It is an attempt to regain those truths which, however wrong they may be, bring a measure of comfort and peace.  When Socrates appears before you, he does not take your truths.  He takes your belief in the security and comfort of your truths.  He deprives you of the familiarity of your world.  That is a harder loss.  That is the loss which stings, as Socrates so famously described it.  That is a loss for which one would put an old philosopher to death.

I am reminded of Plato’s famous allegory of the cave.  We all know the story: prisoners chained since birth, unable to move, staring rigidly ahead at shadows passing back and forth across the wall.  Socrates describes to Glaucon the process of release and ascent through which a prisoner is freed, turns around, discovers the reality behind the shadows of his own knowledge, and arises to stand triumphant in the light of the sun, revealed before things and his own truth.  It is precisely the sort of thing a philosopher would come up with.  It is an allegory rich with meaning.  There is the symbolism of darkness and light, of descending and ascending movements of knowledge, of the shadowy cave of ignorance and the bright light of truth.  There is an overriding sense of the triumph of wisdom over ignorance, reality over fantasy, and the capacity to know the difference.

What is not often told is the other side of the story.  We see only the ascendancy of reason.  After all, everyone likes the stories with a happy ending.  We do not see the return to the cave.  Eyes filled with the sun, we do not see the prisoner seek out his brethren in the shadowy deep.  Hidden from us is the ridicule that our enlightened one endures, the incredulity, and the refusal of the prisoners to be freed.  To them, the only thing gained by freedom is the loss of one’s eyes (for surely that is how it looks to them) and the inability to tell truth from fantasy.  We do not see the death of the philosopher, killed as he tries to free his brethren and lead them up and out of their own ignorance.  For that matter, we did not see the original ascent, either.  We looked past the force with which the prisoner was dragged, kicking and screaming, out of a cave that he did not want to leave.  We miss entirely the pain of adjustment as his eyes are assaulted by the overwhelming glare.  We do not listen to his cries of agony, his sobs of confusion and loss when the only world he has ever known is left a shambles and the new, “better” world of knowledge and light leaves his vision blurred, his certainties annihilated, and his life a lie.

It is not an easy thing to be a philosopher, just as it is not an easy thing to pass through ignorance to knowledge.  When the whole story is told, there is a different image of education (paideia) that takes shape in this allegory.  It is the image of turning around, of adjusting to an entirely different paradigm, of coming to terms with what initially appears with far less certainty and comfort than the “truths” previously known.  Plato’s image of education is one of patient struggle.  We do not run to knowledge.  Often, we are dragged there against our will.  It is not our fault; we do not necessarily prefer ignorance and fantasy.  We prefer comfort, familiarity and certainty.  Truth saturated with time, no matter how false it may really be, is nevertheless preferable to those newborn truths which so hurt our eyes and disturb our comforts.

As a philosopher, I encounter one question above all others: “what does one DO with philosophy?”  Over the years, I have offered a number of answers, some light and amusing, some heavy and serious.  Now I simply respond: “I think.”  There is nothing more to say.  No apologetics is needed.  Thinking is powerful and transformative.  To think is a high calling, and to think well is a difficult, life-long project.  To think is to enact the process of education that turns around by degrees the entirety of what one thinks one knows.  It is joyous, but also painful, and there is a powerful conviction in such thought that the awareness of ignorance is always a more valuable knowledge than the false certainty of conventional truth.  My answer, though, is a recognition that between me and my interlocutor, there is a huge gap.  I take it for granted that philosophy (and thinking in general) is an essential part of the human project and the highest calling of our nature.  It is axiomatic that what I do is address the deepest and most important questions of our humanity, and that the preservation of thoughtful and critical questioning, as well as a deep attunement to ignorance, is inextricably tied to freedom, ethical goodness and right living.  My interlocutor wonders whether I will be able to get a job.  He might agree with my principles.  He may even admire my passion and conviction.  But he will still wonder: What will you do for a living?  I find it amusing, and not a little ironic, that in order to convince him of the value of what I do, I would need for him to undergo the very process of education that Plato describes in his wonderful but disturbing allegory.  I would need to drag him, kicking and screaming, away from his prejudices and certainties.  By degrees, he would be turned around and his knowledge viewed through something other than an economical lens.  I would want to show him, through real experience, that our most valuable activities are not defined by what someone will pay us to do and I would try to convince him that the aims of knowledge and education do not terminate in the marketplace.  As with the prisoner in the cave, he would have to be accustomed to an entirely different paradigm of knowledge.  It would be a painful process for both of us, for I too would have to participate in the same education.  Am I right in my assertion that knowledge stands higher than the market?  How do I address the very real concerns of life, jobs, success and daily living?  Can I dismiss with a cavalier attitude the muddy and common demands of economic well-being only because I already have a place in the Academy and I am fortunate enough to make my living as a professor?  What do I tell my students who might ask me the same question as my interlocutor?

I have deep misgivings about reducing the value of knowledge solely to its economic worth.  There are many good arguments in favor of the position that thinking is transformative and valuable beyond price.  There are also good arguments for choosing other more relevant assessment measures for the value of philosophy specifically, and for liberal arts generally.  None of these arguments is my main concern.  I want instead to address the conventional assumption that a degree in philosophy – that most liberal of liberal arts – is practically worthless in the market.   This is the shadow on the wall that I want to examine.  In the gap that opens up between me and my interlocutor, there is the casual assumption that philosophy must be defended on something other than economic grounds.  Philosophy possesses little, if any, economic value. This is the usual form of the assumption. For my part, I want my interlocutor to see that philosophy has value outside of economic concerns.  He, in turn, wants me to grant that economic concerns are an important consideration when considering a profession.  We both assume that a compromise of principle is needed: I will be a philosopher, but jobless; he will be employed, but not a philosopher.  Each of us will count the other’s loss as the more serious one, but what of the basic assumption?  How does philosophy fare in the market?

For the purposes of answering this question, I take philosophy here as paradigmatic of the liberal arts generally.  There are a variety of reasons for this assumption, most of which fall outside the scope of this article.  Nevertheless, I think it fair to suggest that if philosophy succeeds with respect to economic concerns, there are good grounds for assuming that other liberal arts degrees would fare equally well.  A degree in philosophy is an academic degree.  It addresses itself solely to the classical values of a liberal arts education.  There is strong emphasis on critical thinking, argument, and the history of ideas.  There is little emphasis on job training, practical skill development, and preparation for specific careers.  In short, there is every reason to suspect that weighing the value of a philosophy degree in the marketplace is a sucker’s bet.  Psychology, sociology, history: all are either directly or indirectly associated with valuable, productive career paths.  Philosophy is not.  As my interlocutor might suggest, it is hard to imagine a degree less suited to economic concerns.  Hence, if philosophy succeeds with respect to economic measures of worth, then it is at least reasonable to infer the same sort of success on the part of liberal arts degrees generally.  Moreover, I intend to use practical benchmarks for economic success: job security, employment opportunity, and salary potential.  It seems to me that all students concerned with their lives and well-being after college would do well to consider their degrees in light of these factors, and so my standards for economic success reflect what I imagine would be the concerns of a savvy and practical-minded student.

The assumption that a degree in philosophy has little economic value is grounded in the larger presumption that academic degrees generally do not fare as well as career-oriented degrees.  The suggestion has some merit.  If you are trained to be able to enter a specific career upon graduation, your job prospects are quite good provided that sufficient openings exist and the career path shows at least moderate growth.  Academic majors do not necessarily have the same benefit.  Their skills are more diverse, their preparation extended across a broader, and in some cases less defined, knowledge base.  They are not immediately prepared to enter a specific career, and even where job training is involved, advanced degrees are often necessary rather than optional.  The presumption that economic success is greater for career-oriented majors is so strong that it approaches the status of conventional wisdom. In 2008, the Institute for Education Sciences, a division of the Dept. of Education, decided to see whether it was in fact true: Did career-oriented majors have better employment outcomes than academic majors?  Building on an earlier taxonomy developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the study divided all undergraduate degree programs into career-oriented majors or academic majors.[1] Academic majors were defined as “formal programs of study designed to impart knowledge and skills that represent the accumulated knowledge base in a subject area.”   Career-oriented majors were defined as “formal programs of study designed to impart knowledge and skills that represent the relevant accumulated knowledge within the context of occupation-specific job requirements.[2] One of the most important differences at issue in the taxonomy was the type of knowledge imparted through each course of study.  Academic majors impart knowledge that is broad, comprehensive, and theoretical.  Career-oriented majors impart knowledge that is narrow, occupation-specific, and practical.  The benefit of this system of classification is that it more accurately reflects the connection between fields of study and the educational requirements of various areas of employment.

Employing this distinction, researchers conducted a ten-year study which measured employment outcomes against one’s choice of either a career-oriented or academic major.[3] The most significant finding of the study is also the most predictable: The choice of major directly affects one’s employment outcomes upon graduation.  Whether one chooses an academic or a career-oriented major will have an impact on one’s future employment, and it will begin to do so within a few years of graduation.   It is worth noting, however, that many graduates experienced a period of transition and adjustment after graduation.  Graduates moved around, changed jobs, changed location, or in other ways experienced dislocations that prevented their immediate settlement in a stable, long-term job, and this remained true whether one had an academic or career-oriented major.  Job uncertainty and instability are features of every graduate entering the job market after college.  Even so, career-oriented majors entered the workforce earlier, stayed in their jobs longer, and had a higher percentage of full-time employment overall than their counterparts in academic majors.[4] Career-oriented majors also showed a lower percentage of unemployment and were usually working in jobs directly related to their major field of study.  At least provisionally, the conventional wisdom concerning choice of major and economic success holds up well.

There is good news, though, for academic majors.  Some of the differences in unemployment percentage, full-time employment, and length of time in the job are the result of the greater propensity of academic majors to enroll in postgraduate study.[5] Enrollment in graduate study was more common for academic majors than for career majors, with 39% of academic majors entering graduate school, as opposed to 25% of career-oriented majors. This additional study was rewarded: Employment rates jumped in the third year of measurement as these graduates entered the workforce.  Moreover, while academic majors were more spread out across occupations that were unrelated to their field of study, two-thirds to four-fifths of all graduates (career and academic) were employed full-time within ten years in jobs that they rated as reasonably satisfying.[6] Also, while career-oriented majors begin with higher salaries than their academic counterparts, this difference disappears once other factors are taken into account.  Finally, nearly all graduates experienced a doubling of their salaries across the ten years of the study, and this finding was consistent for both career and academic majors.  It is also worth noting that though career-oriented majors tended to be more satisfied with their pay than academic majors, this did not hold true with any other areas of job satisfaction.

We may draw from this study a few important conclusions.  First, instability, uncertainty, and low job security are strong features of every graduate that enters the work force.  Although career-oriented majors enter the workforce earlier than their academic counterparts, preparation for an immediate career does not lead to immediate employment.  Instead, a majority of graduates experience instability upon entering the workforce, even where they are directly trained for a particular career.  Second, the conventional wisdom that career-oriented majors make more money than their academic counterparts is largely shown to be false.  While choice of major is related to employment outcomes and in limited ways to salary, this does not result in any significant difference in salary or earning potential once other variables are factored in to the analysis.  This is a surprising result, but it should not be.  After all, the type of major one chooses is relatively insignificant when compared to other more weighty issues that would affect salary: job openings, economic stability, location, experience in the workforce, etc.  There are so many other variables that affect salary that the isolated impact of one’s choice of major is comparatively small.  The final conclusion of note is that there is a greater propensity on the part of academic majors to pursue postgraduate work.  Postgraduate work is an important measure of success in its own right and it has been shown to be strongly related to greater job security, higher earnings, and a greater likelihood of employment.  Looking at these broad trends, the conventional wisdom regarding career-oriented majors and economic success does not hold up.  Choosing an academic major does not place a student at any significant disadvantage when it comes to career choices, employment, and earnings potential.  On the contrary, there is much to suggest that undergraduates leaving with an academic major are well-prepared in general for the demands of today’s economy, and in some ways they are better prepared than their counterparts in career-oriented degree programs.

Turning now to a philosophy degree, it still remains to show whether this most academic of degrees exhibits any measure of economic viability, or at least enough to convince my erstwhile interlocutor and my savvy, practical-minded student that a degree in philosophy pays dividends in the marketplace.  I am taking very seriously the recognition that college costs a great deal of money and constitutes a significant investment of time and energy.  Anyone committed to such an investment has to be concerned that their effort is not wasted.  I have deep sympathy for my students.  They face a very tough economy and hard decisions.  Part of my argument, therefore, is concerned to show that their education is worth the cost, not only in terms of preparation for living the good life, but for living any kind of life at all once they graduate and enter the workforce.

Though assessments of value will differ depending upon the metric used, a group of researchers attempted to measure the worth of degree programs by correlating each program with a rating of its overall economic security.[7] Their report, released for 2010, looked at the relationship between college majors and the economic security of the occupations attached to each major.   From the list generated by their analysis, fifty majors were identified and ranked as the most secure majors for undergraduates entering the job market.[8] Among these fifty “high-security” majors, a major in philosophy rated 19th overall.  Its annual job growth rate was 18.9% (compared to a national average of 10.9%), and the annual number of job openings is projected to be 21,508.[9] The annual earnings for a philosophy major are approximately $38,821.  While this earnings figure is lower than many other occupations and majors, it remains above the median annual earnings for all jobs,[10] and there is good reason to suspect that this initially low figure increases substantially over the course of one’s career (see below).  In terms of overall economic security, a philosophy major scores better than all but two other academic majors (religion and communication studies), and it scores better than many career-oriented majors, including most notably business education (with a ranking of 31), criminal justice (with a ranking of 30), and marketing/management (which did not rank in the top fifty).

The researchers point out that many of the professions and occupations that you might expect to dominate this list (management, sales, engineering, and jobs in the social sciences) do not do so because they are especially susceptible to recessions, and thus susceptible to hiring freezes, layoffs, etc.  However, this finding is particularly relevant in our current economic climate since “recession-proof” jobs are an increasingly important feature of what students should look for in a job as they consider their future.  It is difficult to justify a major program as secure when the jobs attached to that major are deeply sensitive to fluctuations in the economic environment.  Philosophy holds up remarkably well for two very simple but powerful reasons: It provides flexibility regarding occupation, and it provides extremely portable skills that are always in demand.  As noted in the ten-year study, academic majors in general tend to be qualified for a wider variety of jobs than their counterparts in career-oriented majors because their path to employment is not nearly as narrow or strictly defined.  In a bad economic climate, the close link between major and career can become a liability for students, and it can leave them unprepared when there are no jobs in their selected field of study.  Philosophy majors, however, learn skills that translate well into any job.  Strong reading and writing skills, excellent communication skills, and superb critical thinking and reasoning capabilities constitute a significant advantage in any occupation, and these skills translate well across a variety of different vocations.  Thus, the high-security status of a philosophy major is unsurprising given the benefits that it offers, especially in uncertain economic times.

Another significant result of the study shows that a philosophy major ranks well among majors attached to jobs that require a bachelor’s degree or less.[11] This is an important finding given that it contradicts the conventional wisdom that suggests that further study or an advanced degree is needed to succeed with a philosophy degree.  Clearly, the data do not support this conclusion.  A degree in philosophy is immediately valuable in the market, and while a Master’s degree increases the effectiveness of a philosophy degree,[12] philosophy is an effective major at the Bachelor’s level.

Finally, it should be noted that in the methodology employed by the researchers, postsecondary teaching jobs were not included in the jobs assessment for major programs.   This means that the security of a major did not include jobs related to teaching that field of study at the postsecondary level.  This is particularly significant for philosophy since it is often assumed that teaching is all that one can do with this degree.  The fact that philosophy majors perform so well in ratings of security without including postsecondary teaching is enough to dispel, once again, the conventional wisdom that dismisses philosophy as a viable major.

It is clear that philosophy majors can use their degree to get secure, career-building jobs that they find satisfying.  But are the jobs worth having in terms of salary and earnings potential?  The answer should not at this point be surprising: Philosophy majors do just fine in terms of their salary and earnings potential, and they do better than many career-oriented majors.  The image of the poor, homeless philosopher that pursues the life of the mind over that of the body is yet another myth that is ready for dismissal.

According to Payscale,[13] philosophy majors rank 16th overall when undergraduate degrees are ranked by salary.  Starting annual salary for the major averages $39,900, and while this is above the national average, it is of course lower than many starting salaries for career-oriented majors.  However, “mid-career” salaries for philosophy majors are more than double their starting salary with annual earnings of $81,200.[14] By mid-career, the earnings picture is quite a bit better than many career-oriented majors that are traditionally considered to be more economically viable, e.g. information technology (24th, $74,800 by mid-career), business management (25th, $72,100 by mid-career) and nursing (30th, $67,000 by mid-career).

The findings show that while philosophy majors begin with a lower starting salary, they tend to make more money overall as they progress in their careers.  Philosophy majors experience strong earnings growth over the life of their careers compared to both academic and career-oriented majors.  This effect becomes more pronounced when paired with the recognition that other more “lucrative” majors begin with relatively high starting salaries but tend to remain flat over time.  Nursing is particularly noteworthy as a demonstration of this trend.  Though nursing is a major with very high job security, nursing majors experience relatively flat earnings growth when compared to other majors (from $54,000 to $67,000 at mid-career).  The result of these comparisons demonstrates that although philosophy majors begin with less, at mid-career this deficiency has not only been eliminated, but in fact philosophy majors are outperforming both academic and career-oriented majors in terms of annual earnings.  If we extrapolate these findings to the relative security of the major overall, it is reasonable to expect that this trend continues in both good economic times and bad.

According to every practical indicator a philosophy degree is not only a good investment, it is a better investment than most career-oriented degrees.  A philosophy degree results in higher earnings, greater job security, protection from the vicissitudes of a recession, and it provides skills that translate into practical and concrete worth across a variety of careers.  If a student is concerned about her future after graduation, if she is worried about her job prospects, majoring in philosophy is among the very best things she can do.  It will constitute a better investment of time, energy and money than business administration, nursing, computer science or social work.

The view that career-oriented majors outperform liberal arts majors is a view whose truth is saturated with time.  It is a comfortable and known truth.  Many colleges and universities have built their missions and strategic plans upon it.  Many students, especially first-generation students, take it as an unassailable fact that a career-oriented degree is what will lead them to a career success while conversely, a liberal arts degree will lead them to joblessness and poverty.  This truth, however, is a shadow on the wall.  It is a believable and familiar one, but still a shadow, and there are those who will not want to give up the familiar certainty of their long-standing truth, no matter how false it may prove.

However one chooses to react to the loss, I at least now have an answer both for my savvy student and my erstwhile interlocutor.  When asked what I can do with a philosophy degree, I shall answer “Anything I want!”  More to the point I shall also, in Socratic fashion, seek out those majoring in business administration, marketing, and nursing and say, “You are learning a fine skill, but can you think?” since that, after all, is where the money is.

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Classification of Instructional Programs – 2000: (NCES 2002-165) U.S. Department of Education,

National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Issue Brief – 2004: (NCES 2004018) Lisa Hudson and Linda Shafer.  U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Choy, S.P., and Bradburn, E.M. (2008). Ten Years After College: Comparing the Employment Experiences of 1992–93 Bachelor’s Degree Recipients With Academic and Career-Oriented Majors (NCES 2008-155). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC.

Ibid., 25-36.  A number of factors influence this finding.  Career-oriented majors, by a large percentage, were already working in the job that they began after graduation (as internships, etc.), and this accounts in part for the stability that they have in the workplace.  Career majors also were more likely to identify their jobs as “desirable” relative to their career path much sooner than academic majors.  This identification makes it more likely they will stay in their current employment.

Ibid. 11-15.

Ibid. 19-23.

Lawrence Shatkin et al., 50 Best College Majors for a Secure Future (Indianapolis: JIST Publishing, 2010).

For the purposes of their report, a “secure” major was defined as one whose supported jobs (a) show strong projected job growth, (b) demonstrate low economic sensitivity to recession, and (c) are not easily “off-shored,” that is, handed off to a foreign country and thus considered reasonably insecure.  Jobs supported by each major were identified through the National Center for Development and the Occupational Network [O*NET] Database, and where a major supported both secure and insecure jobs, a percentage was used to gauge the security of the major overall.  Earnings potential and job growth figures are taken from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Labor. (1-7)

The average number of job openings is projected at 36,000 nationally.  However, the researchers point out that this figure drops to 18,000 nationally when the specific occupations in their report are considered.  The reason for the change is that the total national figure reflects all jobs, including those that are not especially desirable, that require no degree, and that have a high rate of turnover.  The projected job openings in philosophy is thus best understood when measured against the average 18,000 openings for jobs considered reasonably desirable, as opposed to the total national average, and against this number philosophy performs reasonably well.

For all workers in all occupations, median earnings were $31,410 for May 2007

JIST Report, p. 46.

Philosophy rises to 9^th overall among secure majors at the Master’s level. (JIST Report, 47)

Payscale (www.payscale.com) is an industry standard for salary and earnings information . Their research database is used regularly in respected publications (e.g. Forbes, Business Week) as a reliable source of income information for a variety of fields.  Tables available upon request.

“Mid-career” salaries are calculated as the salary that one receives with 15+ years at the job.

This article is part of ASpect’s September 2010 issue on Liberal Arts.