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What to Do With A Philosophy Degree

Philosophy Degrees are NOT Useless!

Daniel Lehewych
3 min readMar 25, 2021
Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

The number of times I and my fellow philosophy-student friends have been asked “what are you going to do with that?” is simply too many to count. There is a quite open myth regarding philosophy degrees: namely, that they are useless. After all, what are you supposed to do with a degree that has you read and write about texts that have little to no practical application?

However, the notion that a philosophy degree is useless and will probably leave its graduates poverty-stricken is nothing further from the truth. Indeed, I wish to argue that it is probably one of the — if not the — most useful degrees one can obtain.

What sort of skills can you get from a philosophy degree? How can these skills be marketable? Do people with philosophy degrees make a lot of money — or, are they doomed to being a barista?

Let’s start with the lattermost question — as, sadly, in our culture, the only thing that seems to matter when it comes to the value of a human being is how much money they make. According to research analyzed by The Atlantic, the average yearly income for someone possessing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy is $82,000. Of course, you are not rich with this salary, but by all intents and purposes, this is a more than livable salary — way more than…

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Daniel Lehewych
Daniel Lehewych

Written by Daniel Lehewych

Philosopher | Writer | Bylines: Big Think, Newsweek, PsychCentral

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