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Well you should also take into account the background of people who tend to major in philosophy. It tends to be an individual from a more privileged background. Not all, but many of them come from money and thus have connections. The few philosophy majors I knew came from money and got jobs through family connections.
Chief
I worked as an engineer previously, and worked on a team filled with physics majors. The physics people were significantly smarter than the engineers, solved harder math problems, but it was all theoretical. They were terrible problem solvers. The engineers were trained to apply the physics to a real-life problem, and thus paid more. It was argued a lot, but across the board, the company viewed engineering as applied physics.
Philosophy majors are similar imo, where they can be super smart, but a core piece of the educational training is not rooted in application
I went to a “top” college and studied CS. At least at my school, philosophy wasn’t necessarily that easy. I feel like the people who did it were very intellectual and put a lot of effort into their major. If you wanted an easy major, you’d do something like sociology or communications. So I’m not surprised they earn a decent amount. Obviously not many became philosophy professors
Chief
Yeah I think when people hear philosophy they are thinking about continental philosophy whereas many if not most programs are primarily analytical.
A degree in philosophy can actually lead to pretty lucrative careers such as law or advanced mathematics/academia, given that much of the subject relies on sound logic and reasoning. One of my favorite and most gifted math professors got her undergraduate degree in philosophy.
That may contribute somewhat to what you’ve discovered.
Rising Star
The graphic specifically says that this is for people without an advanced degree. Law school, PhDs, etc. do not apply.
Rising Star
Where’s womens studies on this list? 🤔
TB4L
Chief
A lot of philosophy majors end up doing law school after undergrad. That is probably boosting their numbers.
Rising Star
I don't think this is a disqualifier - it just means undergraduate degrees are feeder programs to other fields and programs
Also, the rhs chart is misleading because it doesn’t account for diffs in starting salaries. What they really ought to show is lifetime earnings
right, what if they were running the drive-thru at mcd’s and then got a corporate desk job somewhere; metric doesn’t mean much on its face
I wonder who they sampled to get this data.
True!
I can imagine that an philosophy undergrad from Oxford or Harvard is able to score much higher salary than some lesser known school.
I think if you're smart, you're smart. Obviously it matters most what you can do on the job and how much you can sell. I've seen people from all types of backgrounds excel from ivy league types, IIT engineers to communications majors at no name state schools making $750k as L8s at AMZN by the time they are 30.
The P is silent - PSTEM
Most philosophy majors tend to attend top tier school and/or ivy leagues and the major doesn’t matter as much as the connections that those networks provide and many of them tend to be smarter than average anyways. Wouldn’t recommend this to most college goers. Also, this is old data.
Also, how does this research adjust for other confounding variables? Let’s start with the fact that people sometimes double major and or have minors
But what about all the other confounding variables? A few others to start with: family background, IQ,EQ prior to starting philosophy major; quality / brand of the institution where degrees are obtained,
this was my major. ama.
making more than I thought I would make.