At risk of provoking those person(s) who share last names with certain musicians ; I question the state of the Philosophy Graduate in South Africa. Philosophy does not prepare you for any role in South Africa, it does nothing to boost your C.V. or highten your value in the eyes of South African employers.

So why should UCT students study Philosophy? The departmental website sells philosophy on the idea that studying it will increase and hone ones anayltical skills and thinking processes. "If one wants to learn to think clearly, to analyse, to reason logically and to spot errors in the reasoning of others, the study of philosophy (at least in the analytical tradition) is highly recommended."

I do not contest this claim. Philosophy is chief amongst the humanities subjects that hones ones academic and cognitive ability. Yet this is not a technical skill, it is a soft skill. Like being able to write well or explain ideas vividly. While these are undoubtely valuable skills to have in any job, they are also a skills that one cannot provide empirical evidence in C.V. form. For example, If a systems analylist applies for a job in, uh... analysing systems. His employer (in South Africa) is not going to care if he has studied philosophy or not. The company our hypothetical student is applying too is not going to list "being a philosophy graduate is a plus" in the job listing. In short, this valuable skill that philosophy hones is far too transparent to be marketable. 

However, maybe i'm wrong. The departmental website also provides a link for prospective students to an article by the guardian, found here. To summarise the article, it basically says the amount of philosophy graduates is on the rise and employers are more readily hiring philosophy graduates for almost any job that requires the proper use of a brain (obviously football and acting is out).

I dont contest this claim either. But here is were my careful phrasing of the title of this post comes in. I do not think this to be the case in South Africa. Amongst other things, Philosophy provides one with very deep knowledge in the sense that you can provide an analytical philosopher with a problem, tell him the rules and parameters and he can tell you what needs to be done to solve the problem, he will cross the t's and dot the i's. Down to every minute detail. While this is useful in first world countries were quality is everything, in a 3rd world, poverty stricken, country it is not. When the resources are thin and people are hungry and there is pressure to deliver, people dont want the t's crossed and the i's dotted. They just want the damn thing done to an 'adequate' level. A standard general hospital in south africa might find need for lawyers and doctors and administrative staff, but with 3rd world restrictions they cannot find space in the budget for a medical ethics consultant, which is the kind of job that directly applies philosophy (as opposed to indirectly by the systems analyst having honed analytical skills.

Furthermore, europe and america have a far more diverse employment opportunities (such as medical ethics consultant). Look through the career times, gumtree or whatever medium you use to browse jobs and you will find that for the most part, our beautiful country has very generic jobs on offer. Look through the jobs on offer in europe and you find many more opportunities. For example, where else could you use your philosophy degree to a get a job at the giant gaming company known as Blizzard Entertainment but europe (or indeed the United States).

 To explicity state my point, the future of a Philosophy Graduate lies in the realm of the first world. Precisely because the first world can afford to "go the extra mile" so to speak in whatever it is they do.

The only realistic option, then, for the South African Philosophy graduate is to either use the degree as a stepping stone to, for example, LLB or to become an Academic and teach the great subject to future generations of south african philosophy graduates and continue the philosophical race.

It has come to my attention that there is a slight division between the staff and students. More noticably that little tab at the top of the default blog page which will switch you over to the student blogs. What is to be found over yonder rainbow? A few sturdy blogs riddled with advertisement bots and a somewhat dead community.

Unbeknowst to you, the student blogs used to thrive with juvenile life back during the era of Vicky and sQ- when they had students who had to make blogs to get their course credit. Of course this lead to less than quality blog posts from those who were not inclined towards blogging but it was the nature of the beast. Now that that shining era of proliferating student blogging is over, I find myself examining the very nature of the blog site. Here are a few facts that are laid out before us.

1) The staff blogs come up as default whenever someone visits the site

2) The student blogs are riddled with advertisement bots that the staff blogs seem oddly immune to.

3) Vicky and sQ no longer run classes with students who blog (more importantly, Vicky isn't at UCT anymore)

There are some reasonable assumptions I can make from these facts, feel free to correct me as I go along. First, I assume the staff blogs predate the existance of the student blogs. I assume that Vicky and/or sQ (or some relevant predecessor) one day decided they had a brilliant idea in that they could start a course that uses blogs as a medium or is about blogs. However, there is a worry that students, for the most part, will not contribute meaningfully to the already established blog site. The solution is to create a seperate student blogging area and so our friendly blog site administrator made it so.

Now Vicky and sQ have abadonned their student bloggers to their own devices. This has lead to the dying off of the majority of the blogs or migration of student blogs to sites such as the varsity newspaper website. The few students who put effort into quality blog posts are still left, still blogging but without an audience, save the advertisment bloggers. On that note, the appearance of advertisement bots and their exclusivity to the student blogs leads me to believe that perhaps our friendly neighbhorhood blog site administrator has stopped maintaining that section of the blog site. I can't blame him to be honest.

Getting to the crux of my lengthy point here... It seems to me that there is no longer any reason for the student blog site to exist. Rather there should simply be a UCT blog site for staff and students alike The worry of the staff of juvenile bloggers littering their side of the website is no longer there by virtue of there being no more courses that force blogs upon students and as such, the very few student bloggers you will get will be there willingly and be aspiring for qualitative force amongst the inhabitants of the UCT blogosphere.

At risk of sounding revolutionary- Let us share this public space as academics, students, tutors, staff and post-graduate students. The very last thing that we, at UCT, should be doing is taking part in acts of segregation. No matter how minor it is.

If this doesn't fly, i'll simply remove it and seek out an appointment with Tony, our friendly neighbhorhood blogsite administrator.