Nothing against being a MD but a person should learn how to view the world objectively and from outside themselves before they learn even a very fancy trade.

I shudder to think that many lawyers, politicians, civil servants, and judges never seriously studied philosophy on their way to the bar.

Me thinks the philosiphy major needs to go back to school.

Instead of underwater basket-weaving, how about we compare philosophy with, say, learning a trade? Or something that is actually in demand.

-Sincerely,

English BA,
Unemployed graduating-JD.

I’d send three-quarters of my colleagues back to school for the Logic 101 course alone.

-Respectfully.

However, the reason we science majors make fun of humanities students, especially philosophy majors and certain other majors, is that most people aren’t going to get any real-life benefit from that degree. For most people it really is useless. Oh, it will shape their thoughts and will help them think in certain ways, yes (as I already described) – but very little they do in life later would not have been served better by a different major.

That’s not to say that a science degree is necessarily the ticket either… I have a BS and an MS and still can’t find a job. At least if I had a humanities degree I could work retail, as that’s expected (had to get that jab in) – no one will even hire me to bag groceries or serve coffee, presumably because there’s no reason I should be trying for those jobs considering my education.

Philosophy ABD.

And of course, the one thing all these rich and famous people have in common is that they took their undergraduate econ degrees, put them in the bottom drawer of their desks, and proceeded to go into sports, music, acting, music, and all the other things where their real talents and interests would have made them money and fame whether or not they knew the difference between monopoly and monopsony. Not a single person on the “here’s why you should study economics!” was an economist.

Now, of course, people SHOULD study economics, whether or not they want to be economists or financiers or marketers or entrepreneurs. And people should study philosophy, too, if they want to. Beware the volunteer life-counselor who takes your transcript and jams it against the belt-sander of “practicality” or “usefulness.” Not because it’s a bad thing to be practical or useful, but because they’re never right in their assumptions about what’s going to lead to money, security, happiness.

I’ve been an admissions counselor, a student-affairs worker, and a college professor, and all three of those jobs have taught me the same lesson: no college student who wants to be in class X is wasting her time in class X. The corollary is that every student who takes class Y out of a sense of obligation or because it’s “practical” is wasting her time.

Further, if you expand the empirical importance of engineering rigor and experience as ALL present in a task, simply because it MUST be present in a task, consider this recent NYT article about Google’s “people analytics” that reports the contrary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?_r=1&ref=business

A broad-based liberal arts education won’t give you the occupational skills to do any particular job: you need some kind of vocational training, apprenticeship, post-graduate work or on the job training in addition to that. but a liberal arts degree will make you a better economist, lawyer, doctor, plumber, or mechanic, if you take advantage of it.

Whether you actually need a 4-year undergraduate degree and whether it’s worth the time and money is another question, but the idea that you study philosophy to become a philosopher is incorrect.

He won an Emmy writing for Jon Stewart his FIRST season!

Jesus….his first freaking season. head shaking in disbelief……

- double majored philosophy/science BA, MSc, PhD (science)(soon)