The discipline teaches you how to think clearly, a gift that can be applied to just about any line of work
By Shannon Rupp
Salon
Originally published July 1, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
The phrase caveat emptor is never more useful to remember than when paying tuition fees. Which reminds me: At what point does the minister of advanced education ask if it’s prudent to spend taxpayers’ money subsidizing trade school programs training people for dead trades? Just wondering.
Which is why I also recall a philosophy teaching assistant, who took a sabbatical from his fat-salaried job in the computer industry to do a company-funded PhD. He had benefited from that wave of computer development that hired logical thinkers to be trained in the new-fangled gizmos. For a brief, shining moment, BAs in philosophy had been hot commodities at places like IBM. One of his pals even wrote patents for companies that developed innovative tools and techniques. It turns out you need to define that new chair-like thing that isn’t quite a chair before you can patent it.
The entire article is here.
Editor's Note: Comedian Steve Martin has a degree in philosophy.
