Which AOS's and AOC's Are in Demand?

An undergraduate in Britain writes:

I am a final year undergraduate student at the University of [name omitted] in the UK and am currently looking in to graduate schools. One of the factors which I am considering is which departments are strong in AOSs and AOCs that are marketable. However to answer this question I need to know which AOSs and AOCs are marketable. I read your article in the Chronicle Careers ten years ago and found it very interesting--for example the fact that Applied Ethics has an almost one to one ration of jobs to candidates.

My question is this: Which AOSs and AOCs have the most favourable ratios of jobs to candidates? If there were a ranking these I would find that very useful. Is there a reliable way of finding out (are there surveys) or do we have to rely on anecdotal evidence?

Of course I understand that it is somewhat perverse to go to graduate school and then choose your field based on job prospects. However it still seems like the information would be useful. For example students who have more than one main interest and are not sure which they prefer, the information could tip the scale in one direction. Even more so if they are choosing between graduate schools based on their specialty rankings, years before they have to write their dissertations. Similarly it could be useful for choosing between equally attractive sounding courses at masters level, for AOCs.

Please do not feel obliged to give me a detailed answer or to post this on your blog. I would however very much appreciate it if you could at least point me in the direction of where I could find some answers to my question (perhaps it has been addressed before). For example, is Applied Ethics still so marketable (I really like Applied Ethics)? 

Comments are open; please post only once, comments may take awhile to appear.

Comments

[Jan Sprenger]

Good question. Especially in European countries, the market is so tight that it would be unwise to choose a mainstream topic unless you really have a innovative, new approach. Competition is very high and you do not want to rely too much on luck after your Ph.D.

But fashions come and go. X-Phi is certainly booming at the moment, but I would recommend this topic to a student only if s/he had genuine interest in empirical work and if s/he were ready to study the methods of social science. I would go for a topic which inspires you, where you feel that you can move something and where you are confident that you won't get bored in the 3-6 years of dissertation work. Keep in mind that quality is more important than fashion.

Coming to Applied Ethics, I fear that students with versatile interests, including theoretical work, might find it conceptually not too interesting, especially in the long run. But as a philosopher of science and (formal) epistemologist, I am prejudiced. So if Applied Ethics is the thing you really want to do, congratulations, your prospects are not too bad. But don't go for it the above condition is satisfied for another topic, but not for AE. (Looking at interdisciplinary topics cannot hurt either, by the way.)

[Bryan]

Worry about getting into graduate school first, then worry about this stuff...as I'm sure you've noticed, graduate school admissions are insanely competitive, and given that almost nobody (inc big parts of the US federal gov't, like the patent office) is hiring in the US, competition for admission to US and UK grad schools (inc philosophy) will be very, very high. Its not a terribly good idea to try to predict what areas will be in demand 7-10 years from now, and make decisions about school based on that, especially since the chances of you (or anyone) having a choice between good dept's that you've been admitted to is slim. Further, in a good department, you should have the ability to study and gain teaching expertise in a wide range of areas, so this is not really something that's likely to be a concern in deciding which schools to go to.
And your right, by the way - it is more than a little perverse to worry about this. Bottom line is: the market for philosophers is small. Go to school to study philosophy; if you're that worried about getting a job now, that your willing to study something just because its marketable, philosophy might not be for you.

[David Velleman]

This student is approaching his/her graduate education in the wrong way.

The best way to get a good job is to write a good dissertation; the best way to write a good dissertation is to work on a topic you care about, a topic about which you will have something to say -- and I mean something that you feel positively driven to say, so that you will get up in the morning feeling eager to say it. If there is nothing that you feel driven to say about a topic, you can't write a good dissertation on it.

If you are unsure which of several topics you will eventually feel motivated to write about, then you should look for departments that have resources in all of them. And since your current notions about which topics will appeal to you are quite likely to be wrong, you should look for departments that have broad strengths across many fields.

Detecting and understanding your own intellectual motives is very difficult. That is, it is difficult to learn what is intrinsically interesting to you rather than attractive for other reasons -- because it is what the cool kids work on, or because it the favorite topic of philosophers with "the right stuff", or whatever. You have to find a way to silence all of those extraneous incentives and, in the silence, listen to your own mind. Strategic considerations about the job market are just more noise that make it harder to hear the inner promptings that are already so difficult to hear. But unless you succeed in hearing them, you won't end up doing the sort of work that makes for academic success.

[Lisa Shapiro]

While it makes sense to be somewhat pragmatic in grad school, and so to position yourself to be hireable, if you specialize in an area in which you are less interested your work is likely to be less interesting, and so you will be ... less hireable.

My own sense of where things are headed in academia in general is this: Philosophy departments will want to maintain core areas -- M&E, Value Theory -- while Universities will be pressuring for more interdisciplinary courses, especially around environmental issues, biomedical ethics, cognitive science, and probably business ethics (given the abuses of fiscal power of late). Philosophers are typically well-positioned to develop both service courses, and specialized courses, that meet these demands, but don't particularly want to invest the time and energy to retool. A job candidate who can help in getting the ball rolling would be an asset.

[Roger Ariew]

I think the student is approaching his/her graduate education in a sane fashion and that Brian Leiter's advice, given some ten years ago, is still sound:

"it seems perverse to go to graduate school in philosophy and then choose your field based on job prospects. If you wanted to do that, you could have gotten a J.D. or M.B.A., and surely have done very well. You went to philosophy grad school presumably because you loved some aspect of philosophy. The dissertation, if it is to be successful, must reflect where your true interests lie.

But there is a compromise posture. According to A.P.A. data based on a 1994 survey, more than 70 per cent of all U.S. philosophy departments offer the following courses at least once every two years: ethics, ancient philosophy, early modern philosophy, and logic. That is not surprising: any philosophy department, whether at a leading research university or at a small liberal-arts college, needs to offer the courses that cover the core of the discipline.

Relatively few departments can afford to have a specialist in cutting-edge analytic metaphysics, even if they would like to. But a specialist in metaphysics who is competent to cover the basic undergraduates courses in, say, ancient philosophy and logic, might be very attractive. Almost all departments at least aspire to maintain a serious research profile. The metaphysician who can teach the core department curriculum allows a department to meet that aspiration and fulfill its institutional obligations."

[Stephen Krogh]

As a graduate student myself I too find myself walking the line, which separates principled study and academic prostitution. I have been fortunate, however, because my interests are ancient and medieval philosophy, the former of which is always in demand (as has been stated) and the latter of which is always in demand in any of the several hundred, maybe even over one thousand, Catholic universities in the US.

John Caputo commented to me that in the US there is almost a 1:1 ratio regarding job seekers and philosophers who specialize in medieval and renaissance era Islamic philosophy. Though this is terribly specialized, and it would require learning, among other things, Latin, Arabic, French, and German, it does seem to have some relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy, especially as regards Avicenna's tinkering with modal logic and Al-Farabi's, Avicenna's, and Al-Ghazali's impact on the writings of Descartes. Further, for the continentally minded, Mullah Sadra seems to have preempted Sartre to the 'existence precedes essence' beat. In other words, there is a lot of good work to do in the field and there seems to be a lot of interest. But, given the sheer magnitude of the study, and the language requirements alone, the advice offered above is the surest. Make sure your interests align with our study before you are sure the job options do.

[Undergraduate Student in Britain]

Hello, I am the undergraduate who wrote the email. Thank you for your comments. I am encouraged to see that philosophers are (and must be) so driven by their passion for the areas they work in. I concede that it is not a good idea to choose your field based on its marketability.

Given that this is the case, I still think it is interesting to know what the ratios of jobs to applicants are. Not in order to decide what to specialise in, but in order to know what, given your AOS, your chances of getting a job are. My particular area of interest is the philosophy of religion (something I am genuinely passionate about) so if anyone knows what the demand for this specialisation is, I would be very interested to hear from you. Again, thank you for your comments.

[Skef]

To those who are saying this is going about graduate school the wrong way: Perhaps this would be true when it comes to one's AOS, but can you really say this about the AOCs? It seems both true that one could add an AOC or two without being married to them intellectually, and that having particular AOCs could make one more marketable. Some of this advice strikes me as unnecessarily Utopian, and therefore counterproductive.

[Jeff Heikkinen]

I was just about to make pretty much the same point as Skef, and add that I have been told that this may be particularly true of logic.

[Christopher Morris]

It's mad to think of one's field of specialization strategically (see Velleman's excellent comment). Having something to say is all important, and most people will have nothing of interest to say about a field unless their hearts are there. End of story.

When it is time to start thinking of applying for tenure-track positions (the spring before you start applying), your supervisor and other faculty can help you to describe your strengths in ways which are advantageous to you (inc. your AOC). Not need to fret in advance. Thinking strategically may be useful then, when you have some idea about your options.

[Graduate student]

Choosing one's area of specialty based on "whats hot" and sought after seems like a bad idea for reasons that have already been stated. But, choosing areas of competence seems like a different thing altogether. It seems to me like choosing relevant and commonly sought after AOCs is a good strategy to improve one's chance of attaining a job after grad school.

Waiting until the spring before one starts to apply out for jobs to think about what areas of philosophy one wants to be competent in, as Christopher writes, seems like a bad idea. After all, at this point, if one realizes that one is only competent in non-mainstream areas such as metaphysics and medieval philosophy in addition to their area of specialty (e.g., Philosophy of Science), then one will not have the time needed in order to try to do some coursework and try to teach classes in some of the areas that almost all colleges and universities (as well as community colleges)regularly offer coursework in- Im thinking history of philosophy, ethics, logic and perhaps something like Asian or Indian philosophy. It makes sense to start thinking about the areas that one wants to be competent in (i.e., the aeas one wants to be able to teach undergraduate coursework in) as early as possible in order to insure that one can attend courses in these areas and if possible try to teach a course in these areas. I can imagine that having AOCs (i.e., being able to teach undergrad courses) in these common areas of philosophy will make most people better candidates at the majority of colleges/universities. But maybe not.

In any case, just a quick question- what is the general idea about what is needed for an area of competence? Is some graduate coursework in an area (e.g. 2 or 3 courses)and having ta'ed a course sufficient for one to be able to say that they are competent in that area?

[Brian Leiter]

We had an earlier thread on AOCs, which might be helpful, here:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/what_are_the_cr.html

[dankaufman!]

d. velleman's remarks are extremely helpful, but not entirely accurate. the best way to get a good job is to write a good dissertation at NYU! (or rutgers, princeton, MIT, etc.) so, instead of worrying about what your AOS or AOC should be, spend your time putting together a really strong application for grad school. good luck.

[notedscholar]

This post over at the Prosblogion has interesting remarks and info on a particular AOS/AOC, Philosophy of Religion:

http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2008/10/specialization.html

And there's also some general discussion of the field.

[David Velleman]

Brian's correspondent asked about choosing graduate programs -- not about developing AOC's while in graduate school. Yes, it makes sense for graduate students to pick up some expertise in areas where teaching competence might be in demand -- applied ethics, history of modern, and so on. But that can be done anywhere: it's not a consideration that's relevant to one's choice of graduate programs.

[Becko Copenhaver]

If you wish to think this far ahead, you may want to think about what sort of position, should you get one, would allow you to flourish best. Positions at research institutions rely much more heavily on AOSs and less so on AOCs. Positions at small liberal arts colleges are more often interested in a strong AOS with one or more strong AOCs, where the AOCs are taken quite seriously. At my college I teach Intro, Ethics, Philosophical Methods, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind and Early Modern. Perhaps the best way to satisfy the various contingencies is to apply to programs that are strong across the board and take full advantage of coursework, including after the required coursework years. A broad education is both intrinsically good and useful.

[Roger Clarke]

If I understand him right, David Velleman says that one can pick up any AOC anywhere. Is this true? If I wanted to develop an AOC in medieval Islamic philosophy (to take an example from this thread), I would find that there is no one at my institution (at least in the philosophy department) to talk to about it. To be sure, I can read books and attend conferences, but that only goes so far. [This is partly a genuine request for information--I have only a vague idea of what it takes for a claim of competency to be credible.]

Furthermore, the point has already been made that beginning graduate students' beliefs about their own interests aren't terribly reliable. One should expect that a seminar (say) might turn into a dissertation topic--so it makes sense to look at what a program offers outside one's presumed area of primary interest. One would be better off serendipitously developing an interest in a marketable area than an unmarketable one.

On the other hand, if the marketable areas are just the "core" areas that any respectable program should be able to cover reasonably well, then the concern over marketability collapses into the general concern with getting into a respectable program.

[Keith DeRose]

I guess I disagree with the general drift of the comments here. The student said this was just "one of the factors which [s/he is] considering" in choosing a graduate program. That doesn't seem to me evidence that s/he is going about this all wrong. Certainly that could be a good factor to take into account, as one factor among many!

This is about choosing a graduate program, and students at that stage typically have several areas of philosophy they're most interested in, and are looking at programs attractive to them in those areas. If there are several areas such a student is potentially interested in, it would seem to me to make perfectly good sense to take into account how in-demand these different areas are -- *if* we had reliable information on this, and if in fact there are significant & somewhat stable differences here among the various areas. If these areas are about equally attractive to the student, and some of them are considerably more marketable than others, why not take that into account, and other things being equal, prefer the program that's good in the relatively marketable areas that the student is very interested in?

In a comment, the student mentions an interest in philosophy of religion. That was one of my interests, and one of my potential AOSs, too. I was advised, while I was already in graduate school, that that was a particularly bad AOS in terms of marketability. (That was quite a few years ago, so, even if that advice was sound then, that means little now.) That was an important consideration in my decision as to what to write my dissertation on. But it wasn't as if I had this great Phil. Rel. topic that I was fascinated by and instead chose something else I had little interest in in a mercenary-like way. Rather, I had three topics in three different areas that I was about equally interested in. It was a genuinely tough choice for me. In this situation, it seemed perfectly rational to take this consideration into account. If my advisors had good reason to think Phil. Rel. was a particularly unmarketable AOS, and said nothing to me about it, that would seem negligent -- and mean. ("You mean, you knew that I was genuinely up in the air about whether to go into A, B, or C -- that, from my point of view they all seemed about equally good --, and you knew I preferred getting a job to being unemployed, and you knew that B was particularly unmarketable, and you said nothing?!!") Similarly, I'd think, for someone choosing among graduate programs -- and even for choosing *whether* to go into graduate school in philosophy. Most of us think it's good for those making the choice of whether to pursue philosophy at all to have as good an idea as possible about what employment prospects are like -- though, of course, even the best predictions here are highly fallible. So, if there were areas that were consistently more marketable and this could be known or reasonably enough believed, surely that should be taken into account. Suppose you have someone already zeroed in on an area -- say, Philosophy of Religion -- but worried about the prospects of not getting a job. They should be make their decision with the best possible information about what their employment prospects are likely to be in that area. They might still want to give it a shot, of course. On the other hand, someone whose interests happen to be in a super-marketable area (supposing there are such areas), should know that, too, lest they be scared off by overly pessimistic estimates of their prospects.

So, I think this would be good information for potential students to have. That said, I just don't know! As I said in the discussion "notedscholar" gives the URL to above, my vague impression is that Philosophy of Religion is still a comparatively unmarketable AOS. But that's just a fairly vague, not-so-well grounded impression. I, for one, wish we had better information about these matters.

[David Hunter]

I'm inclined to agree with Keith. While I agree with others it is important to be interested and passionate about your thesis topic (otherwise you are unlikely to finish, let alone do good work in the field) I would hope that most of us aren't so narrow that this means there is only one topic we might be interested in... Given this it makes sense to think "okay which of these topics that I am passionate about is likely to get me into an academic post?" After all once you are there you can then indulge in the other topics you are passionate about as well.

This was personally the precise approach I took. Like Keith I was very interested in Philosophy of Religion, however for my PhD I wrote about distributive justice in health care another topic I was very passionate about. There were several reasons for this:
1. In my MA I had already written a 65000 dissertation in philosophy of religion, which I felt meant I could legitimately at least claim it as an AOC and probably an AOS.
2. Distributive justice in health care gave me the ability to claim both applied ethics and political philosophy (both significant interests of mine) as AOS. This then made me a broader candidate.
3. It also allowed me to look at posts outside mainstream philosophy departments such as in politics or bioethics departments.

That is indeed where I have ended up, at Keele University in the UK in the Centre for Professional Ethics, one of the strongest centres for applied ethics in the UK. So I am very glad I thought strategically about the possible outcomes.

[Steven Hales]

Like David Hunter, I also agree with Keith. Nobody reading this blog cares that much about money and employability, since we all went into philosophy. But that doesn't mean that we don't care about those things at all. Students need to understand that they are most likely not going to get a research job. There are few research jobs and loads more positions teaching 4-4 at a state school. Sure, we all want to pitch for the Yankees, but we're more likely to be an assistant pitching coach in Idaho. To land a job at Average State U. you need (this may be a shock) a skill set that is actually in demand at Average State U. David Velleman suggests you should only write on what you love. Well, if what you really love is the medieval lesbian philosophy of East Timor, get ready to serve fries with that. Broadening what you love, or understanding that you will have to teach a variety of courses tangential to your real interests, is not selling out. Think of it like this: if you have to teach several sections of logic to have to privilege of an epistemology seminar once a year, it's just the price you have to pay. My advice would be to have an AOS that is reasonably mainstream and an AOC (= willing and able to teach undergrad courses in) that is diverse and student-friendly. An AOC in Kant's Critique of Judgment is not going to get you a job. Not at Average State U., anyway.

[anothergradstudent]

Going back to Roger Clarke's concern: The subjects of my dissertation are not strengths in my department. Does that mean I can't (or ought not) pursue those areas as AOS since most of my research isn't guided by an expert in the field? Am I setting myself up for a lifetime of adjuncting positions (something, ceteris paribus, I'd prefer to avoid)?

[Jeremy Fantl]

Keith,

You said,

"You mean, you knew that I was genuinely up in the air about whether to go into A, B, or C -- that, from my point of view they all seemed about equally good --, and you knew I preferred getting a job to being unemployed, and you knew that B was particularly unmarketable, and you said nothing?!!"

I knew you were a Subject-Sensitive Invariantist!