Philosophy and your career

Philosophy, like all liberal arts majors, provides skills that can be used in many professions.  Learning how to think, write, analyze, debate, and discuss complex issues helps you to keep up with all the changes facing society.  Philosophy majors can quickly adapt to learn new techniques and procedures. A recent analysis of data from 1990–2019 collected by the Higher Education Research Institute and Cooperative Institutional Research Program found that “on average, philosophy majors score higher than all other majors on the GRE Verbal and LSAT, as well as a self-report measure designed to assess good habits of mind” (Prinzing and Vazquez 2025).

While some people worry that earning a degree in philosophy might not pay off financially, the fact is that people with a BA in philosophy tend to earn more over their lifetime than people with degrees in any other humanities field. Philosophy students have both the highest starting salary of any humanities major and the highest percent increase between starting and mid-career salary. (https://www.apaonline.org/page/data; analysis of PayScale data from the 2020–2021 academic year).