Within the following visitor put up, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, affiliate professor of philosophy at UC Merced, shares some new information about graduate applications in philosophy that she and her crew at Tutorial Philosophy Knowledge and Evaluation (APDA) have collected and analyzed.
New Knowledge about Philosophy Graduate Applications
by Carolyn Dicey Jennings
Academic Philosophy Data and Analysis (APDA) has been operating in some type since late 2011. It collects and analyzes information about educational philosophy, with a particular give attention to PhD graduates and their employment outcomes. Its weblog, which has been operating since 2017, has had tens of 1000’s of holiday makers, and its hottest put up is Best PhD Programs in Philosophy. That is an replace to that put up, primarily based on this yr’s data collection efforts.
An vital caveat: this isn’t a rating of PhD applications. I’ve been engaged in public conversations about rankings in philosophy for years now and have come to the conclusion that it’s extra helpful to have sortable lists primarily based on totally different standards. The table on the homepage of APDA’s website is meant to offer simply that. The desk is presently sorted by general scholar score (for graduates 2012 and later), however could be sorted as an alternative by common scholar score of this system’s local weather, educating preparation, analysis preparation, monetary help, the variety of complete 2012-2021 graduates, everlasting educational placement charge for these graduates, placement charge into PhD-granting applications, momentary educational jobs, nonacademic jobs, or the first nonacademic sectors for these graduates. This information could be examined in additional element by clicking on the title of every program.
Okay, so which applications are the greatest? I’ll focus on this put up on two metrics: scholar rankings and employment, ending the put up with some feedback on general employment tendencies. (Beneath, “*” is used to point applications that present up on each lists.)
Scholar Rankings
Let’s begin with the applications which have the very best advice from their graduate college students, specializing in present college students and graduates from 2012 and later. These are divided by topical cluster. In a paper forthcoming in Metaphilosophy, Pablo Contreras Kallens, Dan Hicks, and I describe the tactic of clustering applications:
In machine studying, cluster evaluation is any methodology that arranges models of study into subsets, i.e. clusters, primarily based on some measure of similarity between the variables that characterize them (James, Witten, Hastie, & Tibshirani 2013, 10.3). Within the present challenge, the models of study are philosophy PhD applications, and the variables that characterize them are aggregated from (1) the areas of specialization (AOS) of their PhD graduates and (2) the ‘key phrase’ survey responses.
For this put up I’ll use simply three clusters, which had been the most effective supported in our analysis: 1) analytic philosophy, 2) philosophy of science, and three) historic, continental, and utilized philosophy.
The next applications got a mean score of “positively would advocate”:
Analytic Philosophy
Rutgers College* (n=26; 4.73)
Massachusetts Institute of Know-how* (n=19; 4.70)
Australian Nationwide College (n=20; 4.69)
College of Illinois at Chicago (n=6; 4.67)
College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill* (n=30; 4.65)
College of California, Berkeley (n=20; 4.60)
College of Southern California* (n=15; 4.60)
Yale College* (n=18; 4.53)
College of Michigan* (n=18; 4.50)
Philosophy of Science
Carnegie Mellon College (n=11; 4.55)
College of Cambridge, HPS (n=7; 4.50)
Historic, Continental, and Utilized philosophy
College of California, Riverside* (n=14; 4.68)
The Catholic College of America* (n=6; 4.67)
Saint Louis College (n=5; 4.60)
A few of these additionally present up with “very happy” rankings within the different domains, similar to:
local weather – Rutgers, ANU, CUA (different universities with “very happy” rankings in local weather are Rice, Sheffield, KCL, St Andrews/Stirling, UConn, and UVA);
preparation for analysis – USC, Rutgers, MIT, Riverside (different universities with this score embrace Pittsburgh HPS, Bowling Inexperienced, UCLA, Cornell, UPenn, Irvine LPS, Toronto, and Penn State)
monetary help – USC and Yale (different universities with this score embrace Emory, Notre Dame, NYU, Baylor, Vanderbilt, Rice, and Pittsburgh).
Sadly, none of those applications have common rankings of “very happy” on preparation for educating, however applications that do have this score are: Kansas, Villanova, Bowling Inexperienced, Baylor, Georgetown, Fordham, and College of Washington.
Employment
Everlasting educational placement charge simply means the proportion of graduates whose most up-to-date employment is in a everlasting educational job. As a result of most graduates (round 90%) desire educational employment, and since everlasting educational employment is most well-liked over momentary employment, this metric is the usual for our challenge as a measure of profitable placement. Starting with this measure, then, the next applications have everlasting educational placement charges which can be at the least one customary deviation above the imply:
Analytic Philosophy
Yale College* (52 graduates; 71%)
College of Southern California* (49 graduates; 69%)
College of Virginia (38 graduates; 61%)
Massachusetts Institute of Know-how* (45 graduates; 60%)
College of Florida (5 graduates; 60%)
College of Michigan* (47 graduates; 60%)
New York College (54 graduates; 59%)
Harvard College (54 graduates; 56%)
Rutgers College* (63 graduates; 54%)
College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill* (56 graduates; 54%)
Philosophy of Science
College of Cincinnati (16 graduates; 69%)
College of California, Irvine LPS (24 graduates; 54%)
College of Pittsburgh, HPS (39 graduates; 54%)
Historic, Continental, and Utilized philosophy
Baylor College (41 graduates; 63%)
Vanderbilt College (40 graduates; 63%)
Boston College (40 graduates; 58%)
College of Oregon (37 graduates; 57%)
College of California, Riverside* (30 graduates; 57%)
The Catholic College of America* (65 graduates; 55%)
Pennsylvania State College (50 graduates; 54%)
Many of those applications are additionally at the least one customary deviation above the imply for everlasting placement into PhD-granting applications (Irvine LPS, Yale, MIT, NYU, Michigan, Pittsburgh HPS, Harvard, Rutgers, and Penn State; different applications not on this record which have this high quality embrace Cambridge HPS, Salzburg, Berkeley, Chicago CHSS, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, LSE, Arizona, Cambridge, and Wash U).
Lastly, almost 20 applications are at the least one customary deviation above the imply proportion of graduates with nonacademic employment, with proportion and first nonacademic sectors listed:
College of Waterloo (43%: well being; consultancy; schooling)
College of Guelph (41%: consultancy; arts; publishing)
College of California, Santa Cruz (41%: arts; consultancy)
Victoria College of Wellington (38%)
The College of Melbourne (36%: authorities; schooling)
College of Iowa (36%)
Fordham College (36%: schooling; tech; faith)
College of Otago (33%: schooling; authorities)
College of Rochester (32%: tech)
Western College (30%: consultancy; schooling; well being; authorities; arts; publishing)
Brown College (30%: schooling; tech; regulation; consultancy)
Florida State College (30%: well being; authorities; consultancy)
College of Dallas (29%: faith)
College of Arkansas (29%)
College of Kentucky (29%: schooling)
College of Toronto, IHST (27%: authorities)
College of Georgia (27%: schooling; non-profit/NGO)
College of Kansas (27%: tech; schooling; non-profit/NGO)
Georgetown College (26%: schooling; authorities; non-profit/NGO; tech; well being)
Total Traits
As reported at APDA, we are able to get a hen’s eye view of employment tendencies by way of a Sankey chart, with the variety of graduates in numerous classes on the left, and the variety of graduates employed in several types of jobs on the fitting. On this case graduates are break up into three teams relying on the everlasting educational placement charge of their PhD program, with these in applications of the very best placement charges in Group 1, center charges in Group 2, and lowest charges in Group 3.
Evaluating the thickness of the bars connecting the left to the fitting, you possibly can see that Group 1 prefers hiring from Group 1 over Group 2 and three, and that Group 2 prefers hiring from both Group 1 or 2 over Group 3. This may occasionally mirror the status bias reported by De Cruz (2018) and in Contreras Kallens, Hicks, and Jennings (forthcoming):
we used two separate strategies to ascertain that status performs an vital position within the hiring of job candidates into philosophy PhD applications, discovering a major hole in status between these graduate applications that rent from all different applications (low-prestige) and people graduate applications that are likely to solely rent from a choose group.
The chart additionally provides a greater sense of the place all different graduates are employed, with the biggest group in momentary educational positions that aren’t fellowships or postdocs.
Lastly, as reported in Jennings and Dayer (2022), the proportion who discover everlasting educational jobs of their first yr post-graduation doesn’t appear to have modified within the pandemic and related recession, as could be seen with the black dashed line within the graph under. That’s, whereas the everlasting educational placement charge does drop for more moderen graduates, that is largely as a result of it takes time for many graduates to seek out one of these place—current graduates have had much less time, and so are much less prone to have a everlasting educational placement. In distinction, there isn’t any drop off once we give attention to these graduates who discovered a everlasting educational place in the identical yr they graduated. This means that the proportion of these discovering everlasting educational jobs has held regular, at the least for many who discover such jobs comparatively shortly.
If we have a look at the first-listed areas of specialization for these 2012-2021 graduates in everlasting educational employment, solely three areas are at the least one customary deviation above the imply everlasting educational placement charge for all AOS’s: Comparative (9 graduates; 89%), Asian (38 graduates; 68%), and American (together with Latin American: 31 graduates; 52%). One other three are one customary deviation under the imply: Economics (15 graduates; 27%), Aesthetics (153 graduates; 25%), and Motion (69 graduates; 25%).
Traits are tough to evaluate. I used listed placement charges for every AOS, such that the position charge of a selected AOS in a selected yr is split by the position charge for all AOS’s that yr. Utilizing linear regression over these values reveals that some AOS’s have a optimistic slope over this time interval: Know-how, Asian, Aesthetics, Medieval/Renaissance, Biology together with Environmental, Social/Political, Gender/Race/Sexuality/Incapacity Research, Metaphysics, and Math have a 3% or larger slope for these years with at the least 5 graduates. Different AOS’s have a damaging slope: Motion, Thoughts, Legislation, American together with Latin American, Logic, Ethics, Epistemology, Utilized Ethics together with Bio and Medical, Worth Basic, Meta-Ethics, and Determination Concept have a -3% or much less slope for these years with at the least 5 graduates. However this needs to be taken with a grain of salt for the reason that limitation of 5 graduates results in gaps within the information. Know-how, for example, has the very best slope however solely three years value of information (.36, 1.19, and 1.64 for 2018, 2019, and 2020), whereas Determination Concept has the bottom slope however solely two years value (1.15 in 2016 and 0.64 in 2019).
If in case you have concepts for the way the challenge can enhance, or different research we should always run, we might love to listen to from you within the feedback or over e-mail: [email protected].
