Philosophy Job Placement Project Ranks SLU’s Graduate Program in the Top 10

10/21/2021

The Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA) ranked Saint Louis University’s Graduate Program in Philosophy in the top 10 English-speaking graduate programs in philosophy internationally. 

The APDA was started by Carolyn Dicey Jennings at the University of California-Merced. The 10-year-old project was formed to figure out placement trends in the job market for doctoral students in philosophy. It is intended to be a resource for prospective philosophy graduate students to learn programs and job prospects.

“Prospective graduate students in philosophy use two ranking resources to make their decisions about where to apply —the Philosophical Gourmet Report, which ranks departments by research strength in various subfields of philosophy and the APDA rankings, which focus on how departments' place their students in jobs, and on the quality of life students enjoy while in the graduate program,” said Scott Ragland, Ph.D., professor and chair of Philosophy. “Our department ranks No. 49 overall among U.S. departments in the Gourmet Report, and No. 2 for Philosophy of Religion and Medieval Philosophy.”

Jennings recently unveiled the latest APDA numbers, which are based on extensive surveys sent out over the summer of 2021 to current and former Anglophone philosophy doctoral students. The rankings cover thousands of surveys of students in programs across the globe.

“Being ranked in the top 10 English-speaking programs world-wide by APDA (for two areas related to graduate-student quality of life) means that we have gained an extremely strong reputation for caring about and supporting our graduate students while they are with us,” Ragland said. “When combined with our widely-acknowledged academic strengths, this reputation should help us draw some of the very best graduate students to our program in the future.”

Jennings and her team combined student recommendations from the 2021 survey with the previous survey done in 2011. At least five students from 125 programs responded to the surveys. The data was compiled and a ranking was created. 

In the overall rankings, SLU scored 4.7 points and was ranked in a tie for fourth out of the 125 programs ranked. SLU’s Philosophy program was the only program in the Midwest to crack the top 10. 

Jennings also provided a look at programs based solely on climate and not job placement. Once again, SLU fared well, scoring a 4.5 and earning a tie for seventh.