Philosophy Works

This past week philosophy faculty from across the UC system got together to discuss how best to support graduate students in their search for non-academic careers. While around 85% of current students and recent graduates prefer an academic career, job satisfaction is the same for non-academic and permanent academic jobs and salaries are much higher for non-academic jobs (see Jennings and Dayer 2021). Other disciplines with better links to non-academic careers are able to find employment for the vast majority of job seekers, and we think this is a possible future for philosophy. To help enable this transition, Tina Rulli, Barry Lam, and I organized a workshop in Asilomar funded by UCHRI on August 21st and 22nd, attended by philosophy faculty from a number of UC campuses. Alex Dayer provided background research partly based on APDA and helped to collate some of our ideas into a shareable document, which we provide below. The key elements include:

-how to construct a value statement

-how to discuss non-academic careers with students

-which skills should be incorporated into a phd program

-what curricular changes would best support non-academic careers

While this was created for faculty in the UC system, it should be useful for other programs, too. Let us know: what has worked best for your program? If you are a student, what changes would you most like to see?

Some photos from the workshop are provided below.

Some Attendees of Philosophy Works 2023: Sherri Roush, Sara Cerne, Carolyn Jennings, Tina Rulli, David Jennings, Hannah Tierney, David Glick, Dana Nelkin, Sam Rickless, Barry Lam, Shamik Dasgupta, and Michael Nelson

Workshop Organizers for Philosophy Works 2023: Tina Rulli, Carolyn Jennings, and Barry Lam

Participants Dan Hicks and Barry Lam

Participants Tina Rulli, Hanna Gunn, and David Glick

Participants Dana Nelkin, Nigel Hatton, Carolyn Jennings, and Shamik Dasgupta

Link to this blog post: apda.ghost.io/philosophy-works/