What you're telling people is very one sided and hugely misleading.
I'll come back to this thread later but in brief, I'm a Philosophy grad (4 years since graduation) and I'm retraining with an entirely different degree for another field.
I've researched this area for at least 5 years.
These stats that you posted come mainly from the GRB so they're not representative of the whole of the UK - only a small portion of people who gained employment via the GRB. They're completely misleading.
I advise any university applicants to look at
uni stats (official stats) and read the employment stats
very carefully. As I've pointed out here on TSR before, just because a university course may have a rate of, for example, 95% of grads in further study or employment does
not mean at all that most of those grads are in well paid graduate jobs.
If you look at the breakdown of those 95%, often it's further broken down into something like:
40% further study
50% working
5% unemployed/unknown
Now, here's where it gets even more interesting:Of those 50% in employment (which itself isn't a great amount), you will see a further breakdown of:
Professional roleNon-professionalWith Philosophy grads, a lot of that 50% fall into the 'non-prof' category.
So what's in that category?
Bar work
Retail
Junior office roles
Cleaning
Temp work
Low-band NHS staff - care/domestic/clerical
I could go on.
So of that 95% you may only have about 25% of those graduates in a
professional role.
So please don't throw out stats and imply that they're great. They need to be read carefully - either employment rates OR salaries.
Another issue I have with this thread, OP:
The point I've raised above is the case for even Russell Group unis, so how do you think the employment situation looks for Philosophy grads from Ex-polys/Non-RG?
Take a look here:
https://unistats.direct.gov.uk/Subjects/Overview/10000291FT-K00048/ReturnTo/SearchOr here for balance:
https://unistats.direct.gov.uk/Subjects/Overview/10006840FT-K0052/ReturnTo/SearchJust read through for any uni - look at the stats, study them. Look at a wide variety. Also, a great this to do is look on 'indeed' the job site and go to the 'search CVs' option and type in BA Philosophy, you'll find a lot of grads on much less than 25k+.
Overall, it is not as good as you're making out and it's not helpful to give such a strong one-sided view of Philosophy degrees.
Some people make a living after a BA Philosophy, I don't deny that. Some people do really well. But let's not make it out to be something it isn't. It's not anywhere near as secure in it's employment prospects as a vocational degree such as Medicine or Nursing or degrees such as Engineering. With a degree like Philosophy you really need to know exactly why you're doing it and get specific internships/work exp OR you need an element of luck plus relevant experience to apply for general grad schemes.
Another final point - grad jobs or not, most Philosophy grads don't do work that is in any way related to their studies (aside from transferable skills) unless they take the MA/PhD route and lecture OR do a PGCE and teach R.S/Philosophy at secondary or college level. Most Philosophy grads don't do work which requires their detailed knowledge of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics or whatever. It's not like they need to flick through that or the Meditations on First Philosophy to do their job selling car insurance over the phone etc. So it might be lovely to study it for 3 years, but in the grand scheme of things, you could get that enjoyment by learning it via a local library/book club/Wikipedia and saving yourself at least 30k and a piece of paper that can become pretty worthless pretty quickly.
Thought I'd give this thread some balance - from a person who actually has this degree and has experienced the graduate job market (along with my peers).