Suggestions, Phil Dept important

jonri
Mon, 18 Nov 2013 11:58:35 +0000

Okay, let me say right up front that I do not know your S at all so this post is not meant as a personal attack.

Is your son absolutely brilliant? I ask because if he isn’t, there is very little chance that he will end up with a tenure track position teaching philosophy at an accredited college. It’s a VERY oversubscribed field–many, many more Ph.Ds than teaching positions. The average time spent in grad school pre-PhD for philosophy was running about 7 years the last time I checked. The job outlook for even those who make it through is extremely poor, even for those finishing the very top programs. If you want something more authoritative than jonri’s personal opinion, look at this: [Graduate School](Philosophy | Seattle Pacific University) You can hope that the job market will be better about 14 years from now when your S is looking for a job, but I wouldn’t count on it. Another good way to get an idea of just how bleak the job situation is by perusing [Welcome to Phylo | Phylo](http://phylo.info/) It currently has 26 job openings listed; some are in other countries and many are not tenure track positions. Some of the positions are already closed. According to phylo, its job listing is accessed an average of 1,000 times a day during hiring season. One of the people who helps run phylo is a fairly recent Ph.D. who does have a tenure track position—teaching digital humanities in a library science program. In other words, flexibility is key.

Now, your son may be the exception. However, I would NOT spend a heck of a lot of time asking questions about where did your philosophy students go to graduate school and how many of them have tenure track positions. Anyone who tells you that more than a couple of their students in the last 20 years have tenure track positions in philosophy is lying through his or her teeth.

So, I would focus on the other aspects of his college search. I’m not saying that he shouldn’t seek out a strong philosophy department; I’m just saying that he shouldn’t measure how good it is by criteria like the number of tenure track profs it has produced.

Colleges with strong undergrad philosophy courses include NYU (notoriously bad with need based financial aid), U of Pittsburgh, and Princeton. I would NOT recommend Yale for philosophy. I would recommend Notre Dame, but it is VERY Catholic. Georgetown and Fordham might be worth looking at and are less “culturally Catholic” than ND.

He might be better off seeking a college strong in religious studies. For that I would recommend Williams College and UPenn.

(In both areas, there are lots of other good programs.)

However, again, I would suggest that the strength of the philosophy department take a minor role in your search criteria. Focus on finding a college with strong academics which offers the other things he wants.