Alumni in academic philosophy respond to our question:

"What can you do with a philosophy degree?"

Class of 1956
Walter B. Mead
By the time I completed my philosophy major at Carleton, I was quite sure that I wanted to end up somehow living the life of a philosopher. However, the attraction of fully paid tuition, board, and room by the Rockefeller Theological Fund for a year at Yale Divinity School persuaded me to try a year there. As intellectually exciting as my four years at Carleton had been, I must say that the year at Yale was the most stimulating yet--studying under some of the greatest philosophical and theological minds of the time, such as Richard Niebuhr, Robert Calhoun, Hans Frei, and such visiting intellects as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, etc. So I continued at Yale for another two years to complete my M.Div. there, and then was ordained in the Methodist Church.
However, my goal remained the same--to teach and write philosophy. At that time most philosophy departments across the U.S. were dominated by a very arid kind of positivistic, or analytic, or linguistic approach that had little to do with the exciting substantive issues that had characterized philosophical inquiry since its beginning in ancient Athens. Soon I learned that those departments of political science that were strong in political philosophy, provided much more opportunity than did philosophy departments for those interested in exploring these more substantive issues. Therefore, I decided to do my Ph.D. work in political science, focusing on political philosophy. At that time Duke University, under the influence of John Hallowell, offered such a program. I was most fortunate that the Lilly Foundation was offering full scholarships for the entire Ph.D. program to those with a background in some theological training interested in going into political science, and lucky to be able to be able to receive one such scholarship. (Having gone through Carleton on a full scholarship for four years, you might say that I had a virtual "free ride" through all my 10 years of higher education!) At Duke I had the opportunity to be exposed to some of the greatest minds in political philosophy--Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Michael Oakeshott, Michael Polanyi--and a faculty advisor who was open to relating theological to philosophical concerns.
Right out of Duke, I taught for fours years at Lake Forest College, and subsequently for 28 years at Illinois State University--both institutions providing me with a broad range of interdisciplinary courses, and to pursue related research and writing interests. In the course of my career I authored about 35 articles, presented about 40 papers, and wrote three books--all relating to philosophical or theological matters or to issues of church and state relations. I took an early retirement in order to address full time my writing interests, and during my 'retirement' I have been involved in writing three more books, as well as numerous papers and journal articles. I serve on the boards of directors of three philosophical journals in the U.S. and Europe, do a lot of 'refereeing' of submitted articles, and was recently elected President of the Michael Polanyi Society, whose interest is in furthering the development of Polanyi's brilliant philosophical ideas, particularly his epistemology.
Despite all the cautions from all kinds of friends and relatives that "you'll never be able to make a living from majoring in philosophy" (by the way, at Carleton my minor field was in Government and International Relations, a program then under the inspired leadership of Reginal Lang--one of the architects of the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance), I've had no problem in making a decent living from this background and--more important--finding that this training has given me much personal satisfaction by the 'larger-picture' perspective and enrichment it has provided. I've held local elective office, and on many occasions this larger perspective, has helped enormously in having a sense of direction in dealing with very practical social and political problems.
If anyone cares to see how I've related by theological training to my philosophical training, I invite you to check in on the Michael Polanyi Society web site, where you can download a paper I delivered at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on November 17, 2006, in Washington, D.C. In the months ahead I'll be giving papers on related topics at Oxford University and at the University of California, Berkeley. So, in short, I would encourage anyone who has been enticed by their exposure to philosophy to plunge ahead in taking one of the more exciting adventures in life by pursuing philosophy. Not all philosophers end up having to wear 'hair-shirts' or to drink Hemlock! But even if I had had to do this (at least the hair-shirt bit) it would have been worth it!

Class of 1962

Bob Nelson

I majored in philosophy, but found my real interest was in history. Trying to continue a liberal arts education before making a commitment, I studied for advanced degrees in University of Chicago in various interdisciplinary programs. Boredom with academia set in after four years, I decided on business and entered GE's training program for financial management in 1966. I retired in 2003. For the last twenty-five years, I was in a senior position on the corporate finance staff. Much of my work related to preparing presentations for the CEO and CFO to give the board of directors and the investment community. I found that I was basically writing term papers using charts and graphs. The intellectual discipline I gained from my philosophy major from my humanities study in general was very helpful in organizing the presentation, developing the data, and drawing conclusions. In 1984, I was working on fairly large transactions involving the disposition of the major GE product line. During the lull in discussions, I passed time chatting with my colleagues who were also working on the financial aspect of the transaction. It turned out they also majored in philosophy ( one at Brown and one at Georgetown). So the shareholders' interest in obtaining the best price was in the hands of philosophy majors. .Throughout my career in GE it was not unusual to meet talented legal and financial staff that had majored in anything from art history to musicology. Finally, I would add that business, at least the corporate variety I experienced, is more intellectually challenging that one might expect.

Class of 1971

Linda E. Patrik
I have been a philosophy professor at Union College for almost thirty years, teaching courses in Continental, Asian and Greek philosophy, as well as in Feminist theory and Aesthetics. My Carleton philosophy training equipped me with good skills in argumentation and in reading difficult texts; these skills made it possible for me to question the status quo of my own culture and to learn about other philosophical traditions on my own. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Asian philosophy was not offered in the Carleton department or my graduate school department, but because of the philosophical skills I had gained at Carleton, I was able to learn Asian philosophy from reading its texts and from debating with Asian philosophers. My philosophical training also played a role in the ethical decision that my husband, David Kaczynski, and I made when we turned in his brother as the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist who had killed several people. Drawing on arguments from Plato and Buddhist ethics, I was able to convince David that his brother was harming himself as well as others, and that it would be better for his brother if he were to be stopped. Today I continue to teach philosophy at Union and I engage in research in Tibetan philosophy.

Class of 1995
Ryan Hickerson
After graduation I moved back to Iowa for a while. In the fall of 1995 I took two graduate seminars at the University of Iowa, and though I was not part of their degree program, it was an opportunity for me to convince myself that graduate school in philosophy is what I wanted to do after Carleton. I worked in a mortgage company for a year, retook the GRE, worked my comps up into a writing sample, and then applied (again) to graduate schools. I went to the University of California, San Diego in 1996, and received my Ph.D. from UCSD in 2003. I then spent a couple more years in San Diego, hunting for teaching jobs (and teaching), and working as an editorial assistant for "Inquiry". I was hired as an assistant professor by Western Oregon University in 2005.
Students often ask me: "What can you 'do' with a philosophy major?" I sometimes answer: "That depends on what you plan to do." The real answer is: lots of different things. The presumption that there is only one (or a small number of things) "to be done" with philosophy isn't true. It's like asking, "What can you 'do' with reading?" (or with a degree in music, art, math, literature,and science.) Such things are, of course, intrinsically good. They are also, certainly, instrumental goods. But it is not the case that intrinsic goods that are also instrumental goods are instrumentally good for only one (or a small number) of things.

Class of 1997
Cara Nine
I'm one that took the unoriginal career option, and I went on to get a PhD in philosophy. I'm now engaged in a career as a professional academic philosopher teaching philosophy at a university. I find this to be a very rewarding career, but I know it's not every philosophy major's cup of tea. So here are some of my experiences in other jobs:
I worked at a non-profit organization as a liaison with children in the migrant farming community. I also worked as the assistant to the director of the Learning and Teaching Center at Carleton. I didn't pursue any of these jobs (because I was going on to graduate school in philosophy), but I did find that my philosophical skills were very welcome and sought-after by my employers. Philosophers have amazing organizational skills-we can organize thoughts, meetings, conversations, agendas, goals, and arguments... even if we can't organize our desks! We also are sought-after for our analytic and reasoning skills: we know how to approach and analyze problems and to present viable solutions. These are transferable skills, good for almost all professions, and I found that employers desperately sought them out because so many fresh BAs don't have these skills. Philosophers also tend to be particularly well suited for jobs that involve theoretical prowess, especially any job that involves applied ethics (jobs working with environmental policy or research; political policy or research; immigration policy or research...)

Class of 2000
Mark Schroeder
My first philosophy class at Carleton hooked me, and I haven't been able to stop, ever since. After Carleton I got my MA and Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton, and I now teach and do research in philosophy professionally, at the University of Southern California, where I have some fantastic colleagues and very good students. In fact, my research focuses largely on the questions I was introduced to in that first Carleton philosophy class, an intro seminar called 'The Roots of Obligation'.
If you are interested in posting a link to it, by web page is at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~maschroe.