Prestige, Career Paths, and Job Satisfaction Among Recent Philosophy PhDs (guest post)

Philosophy PhDs whose family backgrounds are higher in socioeconomic status are more likely to earn their doctorates from more prestigious programs. The graduates of more prestigious PhD programs are more likely to prefer academic employment to non-academic employment, and to obtain it. Those are among the several findings shared in this guest post by Kino Zhao, assistant professor of philosophy at Simon Fraser University and one of the co-directors of the Academic Philosophy Data & Analysis (APDA) project. The analysis is based on information in the APDA database and responses to its 2025 survey. (A version of this post appears at The APDA Blog.) Edgar Degas, “Portraits at the Stock Exchange” (detail) Prestige, Career Paths, and Job Satisfaction Among Recent Philosophy PhDs by Kino Zhao In an earlier post, Carolyn Dicey Jennings reported some findings concerning career paths of philosophy PhDs that was based on data collected from program websites and other online sources. In this…