The truth is out there: employers want philosophers
It is now official: philosophers are in demand by employers. (Of course, we already knew that...). There has been much talk over the years of "what can I do with a philosophy degree?" by colleagues and students. I will never forget speaking with a former FBI Director in Connecticut who said that after lawyers and accountants, the third most in demand group for the FBI were philosophers. When I asked "why is that?" he answered "because philosophers think outside the box and we need critical thinkers like this to solve cases." This view of philosophers as best able to think beyond current paradigms (coupled with general high disastisfaction with the quality of the vast majority of business students) has also led philosophers to be heavily in demand in business management, especially marketing.
Do not take my word for it, see the Guardian newspaper (full story here). An excerpt:
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....Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show philosophy graduates, once derided as unemployable layabouts, are in growing demand from employers. The number of all graduates in full-time and part-time work six months after graduation has risen by 9% between 2002-03 and 2005-06; for philosophy graduates it has gone up by 13%.
It is in the fields of finance, property development, health, social work and the nebulous category of "business" that those versed in Plato and Kant are most sought after. In "business", property development, renting and research, 76% more philosophy graduates were employed in 2005-06 than in 2002-03. In health and social work, 9% more.
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu), which also collates data of this kind, agrees philosophers are finding it easier to secure work. Its figures show that, in 2001, 9.9% of philosophy graduates were unemployed six months after graduation. In 2006, just 6.7% were. On average, 6% of all graduates were unemployed six months after graduation......
....Lucy Adams, human resources director of Serco, a services business and a consultancy firm, says: "Philosophy lies at the heart of our approach to recruiting and developing our leadership, and our leaders. We need people who have the ability to look for different approaches and take an open mind to issues. These skills are promoted by philosophical approaches."
Fiona Czerniawska, director of the Management Consultancies Association's think tank, says: "A philosophy degree has trained the individual's brain and given them the ability to provide management-consulting firms with the sort of skills that they require and clients demand. These skills can include the ability to be very analytical, provide clear and innovative thinking, and question assumptions".......
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It is wonderful to see employers increasingly coming to the view we knew all along: that studying philosophy has real value both personally and even professionally.
Now one question we might ask after seeing these facts and figures ---which I should note concern philosophy graduates in the United Kingdom only--- is whether this is all good for philosophy on the whole. My view is that it is terrific news. Of course, the vast majority of philosophy students will go into the workforce, rather than pursue a career in academia. If students find philosophy an increasingly attractive, then this is surely healthy for the discipline. What is best of all is that this growth of interest in philosophy by students and employers has not come at the expense of "dumbing down" philosophy: if anything, we see a call to push further in the development of our field.
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10 comments:
Thanks for the article. I'm a bit dismayed (and hope I'm not being pedantic here) to notice the misuse of 'beg the question' near the end of what you wrote, however. Is there any way to edit that? (Today my students are reading Hume, for instance, and the more often they see the expression 'beg the question' misused, the more likely the are, I think, to have trouble understanding what he means by it.)
Well, I certainly did not use it in any way to confuse readers of Hume. What you prefer instead?
I think that simply saying "Now one question raised by these facts and figures" would do the trick.
Very interesting article! It makes me happy to know that the business world is beginning to understand what I've known all along: that my work toward an undergraduate degree in philosophy will not be wasted effort.
"Begging the question," if I am not mistaken, is an informal fallacy where one assumes the very thing that one is trying to prove.
Perhaps "raising the question" or "inviting the question" might do.
Would you say this is a recent development specific to Britain or a more general trend? Aguments why a philosopher might be attractive in the private sector should hold cross national boundaries; but the focus of this post has more to do with perceptions than reality. And I'm not really sure perceptions in, say, the United States has altered much. I know your response can only be speculative, but just curious.
Are they talking about undergrad students or also grad students?
This seems misleading. The statistics merely indicate that philosophy students are doing less dismally than in the past. They still suffer more unemployment (6.7%) than the average student (6%).
I'm not sure it works that way in the US. It was sometime ago admittedly, but when I tried to get jobs in the Real World with a philosophy degree, interviewers take when my major came up was that I was a flake: philosophy as they understood it had something to do with mysticism, auras, astrology and such, or at the very least impractical, fuzzy matters.
Once, doing secretarial work in the personnel department of a firm as a temp, I asked the director whether he, as a professional in "human resources" could give me some advice about what kind of work I might be able to get that wasn't strictly secretarial given my qualifications. At the time I had an MA from a Famous University. His view was that there was nothing for me: philosophy majors, he opined, went to college to "find themselves" rather than learn the practical skills employers were looking for and so couldn't expect their degrees to anything for them in the job market.
Maybe things have changed, but I suspect it's different in the US than it is in the UK and that it's still very different for women than it is for men.
I'm with anonymous. If the expression 'begging the question' should be used correctly anywhere, it's on a philosophy blog. Begging the question = presuming your conclusion in your argument. You could have said 'raises the question' or 'makes us ask the question' or whatever.
The "beg the question" phrase has been removed.
On comments:
(a) The article pertains to undergraduate philosophy students, comparing their entry into the workplace with other undergraduate degree holders in the UK.
(b) To be honest, I simply don't know if perceptions have changed as well in the US. I did hear once that the Canada's national health service once advertised for philosophers to join their ranks after disastisfaction reached breaking point, although I do not know if this is any longer the case.
(c) I take the point that while the unemployment figures for philosophy graduates in the UK has been rapidly improving (which is great) and while the particular interest of businesses in philosophers has grown dramatically as well, there is much more ground to cover.
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