A philosophy degree is useful

Framework Pro functionally concedes my framework. Philosophy Major and Salary Even if I concede that Pro’s data is correct, it still doesn’t show that a philosophy degree is useful. Pro’s source ranks a philosophy degree 58 out of 130, placing it firmly in the middle of the pack. The ranking is based only on mid-career salary and neglects the huge disadvantage of a low starting salary. A low starting salary means that even if your mid-career salary is decent, over your lifetime you make less money. According to Pro a nursing degree is less useful because the mid-career salary is $1400 less than in philosophy. But the starting nursing salary is $14,300 more than philosophy! In the 15 years it takes a philosophy major to catch up to a nursing major, the nursing major will have made $100k more than the philosophy major (assuming linear pay increase). The end-all of this is that at best Pro’s data makes philosophy a mediocre degree. If your goal is to choose a major to make a lot of money, philosophy isn’t very useful. Many other degrees will serve this purpose much better. Enabling grads to get jobs in unrelated fields doesn’t make a philosophy degree useful. I did provide a source on this, I just forgot to place the citation in text- it’s my R2 [2]. University of Kent lists sales and secretarial positions as typical occupations for philosophy majors [1]. Apparently Pro thinks I need a source to show that philosophical knowledge isn’t relevant to secretarial work, but I would challenge Pro to explain how in-depth knowledge of Kant’s epistemology will ever be used in a typical office job. The fact that knowledge from a philosophy degree will never be used post-employment shows that simply having a college degree is what is useful. This means that at best Pro has case that “having a college degree is useful,” but what Pro needs to show is that having a philosophy degree specifically is useful. The baseline usefulness of a college degree isn’t at question, so showing that a philosophy degree is an average performing degree doesn’t show that a philosophy degree is useful. Pro’s source doesn’t contest my unemployment stat. Even if I concede Pro’s source, philosophy still performs much worse than the average college degree in terms of employment. But my stats are better! Payscale.com gets its data from people who go to the website and fill out a survey in exchange for access to information on the website [2]. This opens up the data set to severe selection bias. The philosophy majors self-reporting to payscale are more likely those with high-paying jobs looking for competitive salaries. The philosophy major waiting tables probably isn’t going to payscale to fill out surveys. Payscale even admits to sample bias “The median salaries tend to represent characteristics of large state university graduates, since these schools have the largest attendance” [4]. Pro claims my source is skewed because religious studies bring down the wages in my stats. Accounting for this, comparing the studies shows that payscale overestimates wages. Payscale puts religious studies at 34.9k and philosophy at 38.3k, while Georgetown put philosophy and religious studies at 29k. This means payscale overestimates the lower religious studies salary by 23%. A comparison with reported salaries from Virginia Tech ($28k) confirms the Georgetown results [3]. Con misinterprets my comparison of nursing salary. I only point out that per the Georgetown study, a nursing starting salary is what a philosophy major could expect mid-career. I won’t go through a comparison of BBA and MBA. Maybe business degrees are overrated; this doesn’t show a philosophy degree is useful. What is important is that in both data sets philosophy performs somewhere between very poorly and on the poor side of average. Philosophy Major and Life Skills Pro’s whole argument is that philosophy gives you communication skills which can be helpful getting and doing well at a career. This means the whole argument collapses into the above argument of how well philosophy prepares you for employment. Also, cross-apply all my arguments about learning philosophy independently. If the study of philosophy yields such great benefits, there is no reason individuals can’t get these skills without getting an actual degree. 1) If businesses valued the communication skills specific to philosophy majors they wouldn’t have a terrible unemployment rate. If GRE scores were relevant to these skills, it would be common place for employers to request GRE scores. 2) Pro concedes GRE scores don’t prove real world skills. He needs to show GRE scores indicate greater capacity for real world skills to win this point. 3) Communication skills aren’t the focus of a philosophy degree; you don’t get a philosophy degree by having good communication skills. I could communicate spectacularly about how much I enjoy the Twilight books but this won’t earn me a philosophy degree. Communication skills are non-unique to philosophy and so don’t make the degree itself useful. Pro’s argument makes nearly every activity “useful” by virtue of any generic component that could possibly be useful, ruining any meaningful discussion. Tearing pages out of books exercises my arm and improves manual dexterity, so I guess Pro would say that’s a useful activity. Even if Pro is right that gaining communication skills makes a degree useful, other degrees that teach you valuable skills intrinsically AND teach you communication would still be better degree choices and would be more useful. As I explained in my R2 framework, if philosophy isn’t contextually one of the best-going options, it isn’t useful. 4) Improved memory isn’t what makes a medical degree useful. I don’t dispute it is a side benefit to the degree, but no one would justify their degree in virtue of this benefit. Useful degrees are justified by subjects germane to the degree- in this case medical knowledge. A philosophy degree can’t be justified in this way; Pro demonstrates this by resorting to non-unique skills to justify the field. Philosophy Major and the Quest for Knowledge Pro drops my argument that rational people don’t find philosophy degrees useful. This is evidenced by the fact that people don’t seek out people with philosophy degrees in the face of philosophical problems. 2) Pro made the claim “philosophy permeates everyday life,” and I refuted it. Physics is useful for other reasons like telephones and electricity. 3) Pro concedes a philosophy degree isn’t necessary for philosophical contemplation. He contends it “improves” your ability to do so but offers no evidence of this, no explanation for how an improved ability matters in any tangible way. 4) Pro claims learning on your own time is an inadequate way to learn philosophy, but doesn’t offer any warrant for why. Considering the overwhelming majority of philosophical issues are dealt with by lay individuals it seems like lay-philosophy would be adequate for the overwhelming majority of people. Given that most philosophy majors won’t utilize their “adequate” philosophical understanding in their jobs or any more than a lay-person studying philosophy would, it is unclear how a degree in philosophy is more useful than personal study. Pro gives a perfect example of how a useful degree is different from philosophy. Knowledge of physics requires years of training before you are able to complete difficult tasks like designing nuclear reactors- without this in depth training you will fail at your job. In contrast, the jobs philosophy majors take don’t require the years of training in philosophy to complete them. The philosophical knowledge isn’t useful beyond what a layman could know. [1] http://www.kent.ac.uk... [2] http://www.payscale.com... [3]http://www.career.vt.edu... [4] http://www.payscale.com...