Double Majoring with Philosophy. Combine Philosophy with Other Majors. Double Major Many students choose to combine the philosophy major with a major in another subject area. Philosophy combined with another major within the College of Arts and Sciences: Students may obtain a B.
English and Philosophy. Students may select a primary major that leads to a B. Philosophy is then added as a second major, without obtaining a B. In all, 24, students earned a Philosophy major, of which 5, Forty percent might be too high an estimate, if double majors who have Philosophy as one of their majors disproportionately list Philosophy as their second major.
In this respect, Philosophy is quite different from two of the other big humanities majors with which Philosophy is often compared: English Language and Literature 7. Interestingly, Mathematics, which is often regarded as a very different type of major, ranks fourth, with a Second Major Percentage of Last fall, I presented data showing the precipitous decline in Philosophy majors in the past few years — from 0.
One hypothesis, which I thought worth considering, is that Philosophy tends disproportionately to rely on double majors, and it is increasingly difficult for students to earn a second major. First, although the percentage of students earning a second major has declined somewhat in the period — from 5. That said, Philosophy does appear to rely heavily on double majors, so we might expect policies that reduce the likelihood of double majoring to disproportionately harm Philosophy programs.
Such policies might include increasing the requirements for other popular majors, increasing general education requirements apart from G.
Direction of causation is of course hard to know. These groups of institutions will differ in many other respects too, and that is very likely to be part of the causal story, maybe most of the causal story. And yet, the following fact is suggestive: The four majors that differ most in percentage between the two groups of universities, as measured by the ratio of percentage of students completing the major at the high-double-major schools to the percentage completing the major at the low-double major schools, those are exactly the same four majors that have the highest rate of second majors in the overall dataset.
Of course, the median Ratio is about 1. History and English both have Ratios of 1. In other words, perhaps unsurprisingly, the four majors that students are disproportionately most likely to declare as second majors are exactly the same four majors that show the greatest difference in completions between schools where lots of students have double majors and schools where few do.
With a few exceptions, most notably Biology a Second Major Percentage of only 2. Here it is as a scatterplot:. So although it seems unlikely that the recent sharp decline in Philosophy majors is due primarily to a decline in the overall proportion of students declaring two majors, it remains plausible that conditions that are good for double-majoring in general may be good for the Philosophy major in particular.
Could someone explain what is meant? There are two ways to be a philosophy double-major. Majors in Mathematics, Computer Science, Psychology, Economics, Political Science, English, Modern Languages, Criminal Justice, and the natural sciences can usefully combine their studies with a double major in philosophy.
These majors need just 33 credits in philosophy to earn a double major. Most, if not all, of the concomitant courses and arts and sciences electives required for the major in Philosophy will be satisfied by courses taken in the second major. The analytical, critical, and creative thinking skills that one develops from studying philosophy will not only enhance job marketability but will also pave the way for you to shine in your respective areas by understanding the theoretical foundations of your discipline.
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