If you plan on getting your bachelor's degree in philosophy, you won't be alone since the degree program is ranked #61 in the country in terms of popularity. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 12 schools in the Southwest Region to determine which ones were the best for philosophy students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 538 bachelor's degrees in philosophy during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Philosophy School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The philosophy bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality philosophy program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a school's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of bachelor's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their bachelor's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to philosophy students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of philosophy students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt philosophy students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized philosophy related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for philosophy students working on their bachelor's degree.
The philosophy school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Philosophy Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region.
In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat.
Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.
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Every student pursuing a degree in a bachelor's degree in philosophy has to check out Baylor University. Located in the midsize city of Waco, Baylor is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.More information about a bachelor’s in philosophy from Baylor University
It is difficult to beat University of Arizona if you want to pursue a bachelor's degree in philosophy. University of Arizona is a very large public university located in the city of Tucson.
Bachelor's graduates who receive their degree from the philosophy program make about $34,289 for their early career.
It is difficult to beat Arizona State University - Tempe if you wish to pursue a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Located in the midsize city of Tempe, ASU - Tempe is a public university with a very large student population.
Bachelor's recipients from the philosophy degree program at Arizona State University - Tempe earn $6,925 above the standard college graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Texas A&M University - College Station is one of the finest schools in the country for getting a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Texas A&M College Station is a fairly large public university located in the midsize city of College Station.
Bachelor's students who receive their degree from the philosophy program earn around $30,058 for their early career.
SMU is a fairly large private not-for-profit university located in the large suburb of Dallas.
Philosophy bachelor's degree recipients from Southern Methodist University receive an earnings boost of about $8,973 above the typical income of philosophy majors.
UT Austin is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Austin.
Philosophy bachelor's degree recipients from The University of Texas at Austin receive an earnings boost of around $7,520 above the typical earnings of philosophy graduates.
ASU - Skysong is a very large public university located in the city of Scottsdale.
Those philosophy students who get their bachelor's degree from Arizona State University - Skysong earn $6,925 more than the standard philosophy graduate.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.