Did you know?
When you major or minor in philosophy at SPU, you develop strong skills that are important to a wide variety of careers. Such skills include being a good critical thinker and problem solver; understanding connections across complex ideas; communicating and listening well; and weighing others' different values and points of view.
Such skills are among the characteristics most highly sought after by potential employers in tech, business, government, and non-profits. See:
For more info on how philosophy majors do after college, see: Employment and earnings and Philosophy graduates' earnings better than all other humanities (also here). Philosophy students also outperform most other majors standardized tests, such as the GRE and the LSAT; philosophy graduates also have among the highest admission rates for law school. For more on the career value of studying philosophy, check out the following:
- The Humanities and the Future (Scientific American, March 22, 2019)
- Philosophy Prepared Me for a Career in Finance and Government (New York Times, Apr. 30, 2018)
- Why studying Philosophy may soon be worth more than Computer Science (CNBC, Feb. 21, 2018)
- The Unexpected Way Philosophy Majors are Changing the World of Business (Huffington Post, Dec. 6, 2017)
- Tech has a Big Talent Gap, and Companies are Hiring Philosophy Majors (CNBC, Nov. 16, 2017)
- Tech’s Hottest Ticket, (Forbes, July 29, 2015)
- Why I Was Wrong About Liberal Arts Majors (Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2016)
- How Philosophy Makes You a Better Leader (Harvard Business Review, Sept. 19, 2014)
Many of our graduates also continue study in graduate school or law school: recently, at Harvard Divinity School, Princeton University, Oxford University, University of Chicago, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Indiana University, and Villanova. Others enter careers in the tech industry, data analysis, data science, business consulting, ministry, teaching, and counseling. (Famed pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson, perhaps SPU's best known graduate, was a philosophy major!) Here is a recent profile of one of our philosophy graduates who works in AI at Microsoft.
If you choose a major other than philosophy, consider studying philosophy as your second major. “Double-majoring” allows students to get the most of their university experience and brings out the connections between disciplines. Students interested in Philosophy also may be interested in SPU's Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) program, or SPU's Bioethics and Humanities minor.
Upcoming Events
Hud Hudson (Professor of Philosophy, Western Washington University), will be giving our 2024 Layman Lecture on "In, Out, Up, Down, and Around: Five Conversations on Analytic Theology," on Tuesday, May 21, at 4pm in the Library Seminar Room.
For more on this talk, and for past visiting speakers, see here.