I hate to beat a dead horse, because I hate people who beat dead horses. (Yes, I realize that’s a lot of hate for one sentence. Lent is almost over, right???) So I feel it is incumbent upon me to mention, before the jump, that for anyone who got tired of the Merits of Philosophy … well, this post is more about the Merits of Philosophy. But it’s also a link to a factual, statistical study by a real live philosopher, so you might want to check it out anyway …
For it seems that Philosophy is not only a road to truth and wisdom, but also a path to becoming smarter. No kidding! Or maybe we Philosophy folks are just smarter to begin with? Read and consider.
In the interests of full disclosure, I must note, however, that while my undergrad is in Philosophy, I’ve always been an English major at heart. Which still makes me sound smart, apparently, as long as I don’t have to balance the checkbook at the end of the month.
What was truly frightening about Law’s graph, however, is the fact that Public Administration majors do so poorly (only Social Work led to a lower overall score). These are the people we hire to run our government? Oy vey and aye yai yai!
Yay for philosophy! The average composite score for philosophy majors was almost as high as for physics majors. It probably helps that they both require studying logic (physics requires formal, and I believe most philosophy programs require at least informal logic). Of course, the GRE isn’t accepted as an intelligence test (at least, not by MENSA), but philosophy majors also do very well on the LSAT, which MENSA does accept.
I suspect the success of students with these backgrounds is at least in part because smart people are attracted to (and stick with) difficult majors. For my physics class, for example, we started with 11 people my freshman year and ended up with 4 by the time I graduated. The other 7 switched to less challenging majors.
The scores for the Public Administration majors are really funny. I’ve heard that these days most PA jobs are going to people with backgrounds in engineering, so I wonder what Public Administration majors end up doing. Perhaps the punchline of Joseph’s joke should be changed to “The graduate with an Public Administration degree asks, “Do you want fries with that?””
Most professional politicians majored in law, Sophia; rest a bit easier (though not much easier, all things considered). Pub. Admin. people generally, I think, are members of school boards or city councils who get ambitious, go back to school and get a master’s in “public administration.” Bachelors in p.a. are ambitious policemen and court clerks who want promotions.
Colleges and universities are full of made-up majors, none of which have anything to do with education.
I was an English major. Even took all my electives in English. Got an M.A. in English, spec in Brit Lit., esp. romantiicism. Then I got an M.Ed. so I could pay my rent, and an Ed.S. to get a pension.
That’s how it goes….