Career Prospects

Career Prospects with a Philosophy Degree

Philosophy is not only a fascinating and challenging subject in its own right, it also turns out that it improves your job prospects and salary! Data show that Philosophy graduates in the US do better than most of the other humanities and social sciences, and also better than business and some of the natural sciences as well. By "better" we mean the mid-career salary and salary growth rate, the performance on US graduate exam results (GRE, LSAT, GMAT). Here is a graphic representation of the results:

(opens in a new window)http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/resmgr/Images/phil-test-scores-salaries.png

The salary data comes from a survey by the Wall Street Journal. Here is the full data, if you are interested. The results can be sorted in various columns, and philosophy seems to do surprisingly well.

(opens in a new window)http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html

Finally, here is a website from the UK context with advice on the different careers that philosophy can prepare you for, together with some information about those careers (job description, requirements, training, salaries):

(opens in a new window)https://www.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/what-can-i-do-with-my-degree/philosophy