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Placement Rate

A collection of 13 posts

2026 Data Update on Placement, Program Ratings, Student Comments, and Keywords

Permanent academic placement for philosophy PhDs looks steady, while program and climate ratings are up.

2024 Data Collection Results: a focus on recent graduates

Over the spring and summer we updated the database using placement pages and other public sources of data (h/t Ricardo Rodriguez), inviting program representatives to edit their dashboards at the end of the summer. This effort led to 406 new graduates in the covered period (2013–2023), over 2/

2023 Data Collection Results: Employment

As mentioned in the previous post, we have completed our data gathering for nearly 150 programs, with our new data dashboard capturing nearly 6,000 philosophy PhD graduates between 2013 and 2023. These graduates are largely in academic jobs: 40% have had permanent academic employment (2,379 of 5,998)

The New Data Dashboard

Between February and August of this year the APDA project has been busy collecting and checking data on the employment status of recent graduates from nearly 150 philosophy PhD programs. Three people were especially key to this effort: Alisha Nesslage, now a graduate student at UC Irvine, Ricardo Rodriguez, a

2022 Data Collection Results

Since January we have been collecting data on over 200 PhD programs. The sortable table published to the home page today includes ten years of data for around 140 programs, nearly 50 of which have so far been able to verify our data. Analysis of that data is below, but

2021 Top Programs

Bottom Quartile of Philosophy PhD Programs Ranked by Average Student Rating with Placement Rate and Student Comments

In the last three weeks I have posted some information about philosophy PhD programs, ranked by average student rating (you can see the other three posts here: https://academic-placement-data-and-analysis.ghost.io/tag/2021-top-programs/). This week I am covering the bottom quartile. One thing to

2021 Top Programs

Third Quartile of Philosophy PhD Programs Ranked by Average Student Rating with Placement Rate and Student Comments

The last two weeks I have posted information about the top quartile [https://academic-placement-data-and-analysis.ghost.io/topquartilephilosophyphdprograms/] and second quartile [https://academic-placement-data-and-analysis.ghost.io/secondquartilephilosophyphdprograms/] of philosophy PhD programs according to average student rating. This week I am covering the third quartile.

2021 Top Programs

Second Quartile of Philosophy PhD Programs Ranked by Average Student Rating with Placement Rate and Student Comments

Last week I posted information about the top quartile [https://academic-placement-data-and-analysis.ghost.io/topquartilephilosophyphdprograms/] of philosophy PhD programs according to average student rating. This week I am covering the second quartile. What is the difference between these quartiles? There are only two statistically significant ones out

2021 Top Programs

Top Quartile of Philosophy PhD Programs Ranked by Average Student Rating with Placement Rate and Student Comments

In this blog post I collate some updated information about 30 of the best rated PhD programs in philosophy according to APDA surveys of past graduates and current students: * keywords (if 3+ participants chose the keyword), * average program ratings (if 5+ participants rated the program on that dimension), * job placement,

PhD Programs Featured

Best PhD Programs in Philosophy

What is the best PhD program in philosophy? In one way of thinking about it, this question doesn’t make much sense. Philosophy is many different things and philosophers can be many different types of people, so the best program will depend on the person in question and the type

PhD Programs Featured

Philosophy PhD Programs: Running Tally 2019-2020

In this sortable, searchable table I keep a running tally of some of the information from the weekly posts on philosophy PhD programs (the posts are linked in the table). These posts are from mid March 2019 to late June 2020, covering 135 PhD programs. For earlier information, see our

Placement Rate Featured

The Philosophical Gourmet Report and Placement

by Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Pablo Contreras Kallens, and Justin Vlasits The Academic Placement Data and Analysis project (henceforth, APDA) has yielded the most complete information on placement for PhD graduates in philosophy to date, with a focus on graduates between 2012 and 2016. All the data are publicly available on

Permanent Placement and Area of Specialization for 2012-2016 Graduates

For graduates of philosophy PhD programs, area of specialization can make a difference to placement outcome. Many positions are advertised only within a specific area of specialization, and the number advertised in each area varies year to year. What's more, the number of graduates in each area varies