Right on GRE categorization. But, while there is not good (or maybe no) data on the actual breakdown, it seems very unlikely that someone would be taking GRE with philosophy as intended area of study who had not studied philosophy, either as a major, a double-major, a minor, or even as the student who took a lot of philosophy but was just shy of declaring it as a second major. Philosophy majors often declare “late” in their undergraduate career, because they sometimes don’t find it until they take some general education course, and then realize that they like it and are good at it. In the sciences, it would be very hard to start a science major relatively late. Thus the students who take GREs intending to pursue graduate study in physics are almost certainly physics majors. However, the student going on to study philosophy at the graduate level may not have officially declared or graduated with a philosophy major, or they may have graduated with it as a second major and that might not show up in a lot of the official statistics on undergraduate majors. (For example, I believe that a lot of the NCES data reports one student/one major, so that there is not double-counting of students. I know at my institution, philosophy is often the second chosen major, and is not listed as the “primary” major. In fact, even in some of our internal reporting the second majors were not getting counted at all, which was seriously under-reporting the strength of the philosophy major. We have now fixed that, so that we have much better internal data, and that has been important for resource allocation.)

Anyway, my general point is that it seems quite improbable that someone would intend to pursue graduate study in philosophy without having studied it in a substantial way at the undergraduate level. In that sense, the GRE is probably a pretty good selector for “philosophy students” even if not always “philosophy majors.”

Link to an excel file for the Forbes earning data, so you can format your chart as you wish: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2Qb_8pU4arocVZLMVN2X0FETU0/view?usp=sharing

If you could post a link to the other data, that would be nice: I’d like the option to format these charts!

I think it is very important to have this point in mind: the ability your major or your univirsity degree gives to u, must be a kind of usefull one. Everybody who studies philosophy as his or her official major, must choose his or her interests such that it covers something important in our modern world and society..it means we, as philosophy students or professional philosophers, must work on much more realistic and practical problems while making geniune philosophical reflections and analysis…we should solve public problems, whith our own special ways and technics

Hi, great set of charts and information.

I just have a question regarding this oft-cited statistic (so nicely summarized in your chart) that shows that Philosophy graduates earn more than those in other humanities disciplines. (As shown here, it is ranked roughly, 1. Philosophy, 2. History, 3. Languages, 4. Drama and Art).

Now, looking at other statistics, it is intriguing to find that the Gender Distribution appears to mirror that ranking precisely, in this way: That there is a preponderance of males enrolled in undergraduate Philosophy (the highest of the Humanities discipline by a long shot), with the next highest percentage of males being in History, followed by a male minority and significant female majority in Languages, and a more significant female majority in the Fine Arts.

As we are all also aware that Women on average take home less pay in their careers then men do (for reasons both of discrimination, well-documented, as well as the other sociological points of some women working less “manically” then men do (on average), and spending slightly more hours with family, etc.). —

As we are all aware of the statistics on men and women’s averages of pay, it leads me to wonder if the argument that “You will make more if you go into Philosophy!” Might be a little misleading?

I.e., if I am already a Male for instance, could it not be partly that why Philosophy appears to pay higher just be that there are more males who have graduated with Philosophy degrees? (and maybe the jobs they are now doing are closely related with their degrees — or maybe they are not, but either way because of the much higher percentage of males within that cohort, their average income is marginally higher, as would be the case in ANY cohort with a majority of males, as compared with a majority of Female earners, in our current society).

This question just occurs to me whenever I see this statistic. And apologies if this was a long-winded way of putting the question. But is there anything to this point? Or do you think the income discrepancy between Philosophy and History, and between History and Languages/Fine Arts, is significantly more than even that between such relative proportions of males/females in any sample group? (Maybe this is something I could look up myself through the data, but as you have expertise presumably in this area, would like to hear any feedback from others!)

Thanks a lot, Cheers

English: 33% men; 67% women.

Average Salary for that proportion of men and women in a random sample of population:
0.670 * 39,621 = 26,546
0.330 * 50,383 = 16,626
(clunky calculations)
(result)
26,546 + 16,626 = 43,172

So. For a random sample of men and women in the proportion of men and women that graduate with Philosophy degrees, we get: salary of 46,992

For a random sample of men and women in the proportion of genders that graduate with English degrees, we get: Salary of 43,172.

Difference of: $3,820 per year.

OK, let’s see what the chart holds:

Early career is Philosophy 41,700, English 38,700. Difference of only $3,000 per year.

So according to this data, for “Early Career,” at least, once you adjust for the gender imbalance, it MAY BE BETTER for AN INDIVIDUAL MAN OR WOMAN to go into ENGLISH THAN PHILOSOPHY, (if they want to earn an extra paltry $800 per year).

The difference is minimal, but it does suggest that the two are comparable in this “Early career” data, and that the apparent advantage to Philosophy for that data point, may be rather specious?

That said, the difference does get more substantial for “Late career” (however on earth that is defined), and “Lifetime earnings,” So perhaps for those the argument is borne out that Philosophy earns an average person, men or woman, more than an English degree.

Maybe I’ll have to work out the full details later. Thanks for following along. And thanks for providing this data in the first place, interesting stuff.

The LSAT chart, like many others on the internet, is misleading because it omits many majors that outranked philosophy and economics in 2014-15. (The chart also makes it look like philosophy outranked economics, even though economics had a slightly higher mean than philosophy.) The full results for 2014-2015 are here: https://www.lsac.org/data-research/data/applicants-major. (You will need to open the Excel file and sort highest to lowest “Mean LSAT.”)

1. Astronomy — 165.83
2. Statistics — 162.33
3. Physics, General — 162.02
4. Biophysics — 162.00
5. Mathematics — 160.99
6. Linguistics — 160.71
7. Bio/Biomedical — 160.50
8. Classics — 160.45
9. American Civilization — 159.48
10. Russian — 159.47
11. Industrial Relations — 159.29
12. Economics — 158.99
13. Policy Studies — 158.78
14. Engineering — Other 158.70
15. Biochemistry — 158.56
16. Physics, Specialization — 158.56
17. Aerospace and Aeronautical — 158.26
18. Petroleum Engineering — 158.25
19. Art History — 158.17
20. Philosophy — 158.05
…

This chart is still important though. So philosophy is really only on top based on excluding a wide range of majors?! I had no idea.