Question Does anyone know the national average number of Americans that will study philosophy in their lifetimes?

Accepted:
August 18, 2007

Comments

I'd like to know if my colleagues have any better information than I do. The best I have to offer is a not very reliable guess based on limited information. There is a graph at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/97trends/ea1-6.htm which, when extrapolated, leads to the estimate that perhaps as many as 70% of people in the USA who have a high school diploma will have at least some college education. And what's posted at http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusandstatistics/a/highschool.htm claims that 85% of adults 25 and over have a high school diploma. This suggests that perhaps about 64% of people in the US will have at least some college education -- a figure that I seem to recall being consistent with something I read elsewhere. But to complete our guesswork, we need an estimate of the percentage of people among those with at least some college education who take a philosophy course. Here I have nothing to offer but instinct. And my guess is that it is no higher than 20% and quite possibly considerably lower. Putting all this together, my upper bound would be 12% to 13%. If asked not for a maximum but for my best specific estimate, I'd put the figure quite a bit lower, but all that is worth little more than the pixels on your screen.

Anyone have anything closer to real information?

Question Does anyone know the national average number of Americans that will study philosophy in their lifetimes? Accepted:August 18, 2007

Question Does anyone know the national average number of Americans that will study philosophy in their lifetimes?

Accepted:
August 18, 2007