Monday, April 7, 2008

In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined


A recent New York Times Article points out the growing popularity of "philosophy" as an undergraduate major.

"Nationwide, there are more colleges offering undergraduate philosophy programs today than a decade ago (817, up from 765), according to the College Board. Some schools with established programs like Texas A&M, Notre Dame, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, now have twice as many philosophy majors as they did in the 1990s."

Really, this should come as no surprise as graduate school is becoming a necessary extension of a student's education. According to the University of Buffalo, philosophy students tend to score higher on the GRE, LSAT, and GMAT (I suspect they do pretty well on the MCAT as well...as long as they double-majored in a science).

In addition to higher standardized test scores, studying philosophy will make you the coolest person in your circle of friends [citation needed].

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In addition to higher standardized test scores, studying philosophy will make you the coolest person in your circle of friends [citation needed].

Get a cooler circle of friends.

Josh said...

A short list of hip philosophy majors:

Wes Anderson
Ethan Coen
Wes Craven
Bruce Lee
Harrison Ford
Woody Allen
Steve Martin
Dennis Miller
Jimmy Kimmel
Stephen Colbert
John Elway
Mike Schmidt
Phil Jackson

Could Ethan Coen have written the screenplay to "No Country for Old Men" without having read Camus? Could Harrison Ford have escaped the Temple of Doom without knowing the finer points of Kant? Could Elway have surpassed 50,000 passing yards without understanding the finer points of Aristotle's Poetics? Doubtful.