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Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary

Scrub through 324years of this role's history, from when it first emerged, through every wave of technology that reshaped it, to the cited projections for where it's heading next.

2026drag to travel through time
172517501775180018251850187519001925195019752000now
2026
Known today as Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary (BLS SOC 25-1126)
Latest actual · 2024
27K
O*NET 2024 employment figure for SOC 25-1126, reflecting the BLS OEWS May 2024 national establishment-survey estimate. Employment grew modestly from approximately 20,000-22,000 in the early 2000s to 27,300 by 2024, partly driven by enrollment growth at four-year institutions and, more recently, by demand for AI ethics and technology ethics courses that philosophy departments are uniquely positioned to supply. The projected growth from 2024 to 2034 is 0.7 percent (BLS National Employment Matrix) -- classified as "slower than average" growth -- reaching approximately 27,500 by 2034.
Latest actual · 2024
$78,050
BLS OEWS May 2024 median annual wage for 25-1126, as reflected in O*NET. The curated file for this role (researched May 2026) documents a BLS OES May 2025 median of $80,840 -- the 2024 figure from O*NET and the 2025 OEWS figure are the two best-sourced present-day anchors available. The 2024 figure is used as the baselineYear for projections per the profile requirement. The wage reflects that philosophy and religion faculty are predominantly employed at four-year institutions, where the academic labor market pays a premium over two-year colleges; the median masks a wide distribution from adjunct/visiting rates below $50,000 to tenured full-professor salaries above $120,000 at R1 institutions.
Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.
Tools of the era

The tools that defined the work

Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Manuscript, letter press, and the recitation method (colonial moral philosophy era)

    Colonial-era philosophy and religion instruction required no specialized tools beyond the classical library and the lecture hall. Professors worked from personal manuscript notes, assigned texts printed by the handful of colonial and early national presses, and examined students through oral recitation -- a method inherited from medieval scholasticism in which students memorized and defended positions from assigned texts. The professor's primary tool was a personally assembled library of Greek, Latin, and English philosophy; the teaching method was formal lecture followed by disputation. Publication was rare and often through pamphlets or sermons rather than specialist journals. The intellectual content of the role (moral philosophy as civic virtue and religious apologetics) changed little from the colonial period through the early republic.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Scholarly journals, the monograph press, and the research seminar (German-model professionalization era)

    The founding of Johns Hopkins in 1876 on the German Humboldtian model introduced two tools that transformed the philosophy profession: the scholarly journal as the primary vehicle for demonstrating research competence, and the graduate research seminar as the primary site of doctoral training. The Philosophical Review (1892), The Monist (1890), the International Journal of Ethics (1890), and the Journal of Philosophy (1904) created a citation-and-review economy that replaced the personal letter and the pamphlet as the currency of philosophical reputation. The typewriter, widely adopted in academic offices from the 1890s onward, accelerated manuscript production but did not change the fundamental shape of the work: solo scholarly argument committed to print and subjected to peer judgment. The founding of the American Philosophical Association in 1900 formalized the job market and the review system simultaneously.

    Effect on the work

    Professionalization through journal publication raised the entry credential for philosophy faculty from ordination to the PhD plus a publication record, effectively excluding clergy without research training and concentrating the profession at research universities. By 1900 roughly 300 PhDs were being produced annually across all disciplines in the United States; philosophy PhDs were a tiny fraction, but the credential was the new gatekeeper.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Mimeograph, overhead projector, and the electric typewriter (postwar mass higher education era)

    The GI Bill enrollment surge of 1945-1955 and the subsequent baby boom expansion transformed philosophy and religion departments from small seminars of 5-10 students into large lecture sections of 100-300 undergraduates. The overhead projector (widely adopted in university classrooms by the 1960s), the mimeograph machine for mass-distributing reading packets, and the electric typewriter for faster manuscript production were the primary new tools. Course materials moved from rare printed texts to photocopied reading packets; the large introductory ethics or world religions course became the dominant format for philosophy and religion instruction. The expansion also drove the academic labor crisis: by the early 1970s, PhD programs were producing far more philosophers than tenure-track positions could absorb, and the tight academic labor market of 1972-1982 made the humanities job crisis a permanent fixture of academic culture.

    Effect on the work

    The postwar expansion roughly doubled philosophy and religion faculty employment from approximately 1950 to 1970. The subsequent contraction in tenure-track positions -- driven partly by financial constraints and partly by growing use of adjunct and part-time instructors -- meant that many of the faculty hired in the 1960s were the last generation to enter stable careers without extraordinary competition. By 1980, the humanities tenure-track job market had become significantly more difficult.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Word processor, JSTOR, and the internet (digital humanities tools arrival)

    The IBM PC (1981) and the Macintosh (1984) replaced the typewriter for manuscript preparation by the late 1980s; WordPerfect and later Microsoft Word became the standard platform for philosophical argument production. The transformation in research practice, however, came with JSTOR (launched 1995-1996): for the first time, full-text search across decades of philosophy journal archives was possible from a desktop, compressing the literature-search phase of scholarship from weeks in the stacks to hours at a terminal. PhilPapers launched in 2006 as a comprehensive philosophy-specific database. The internet also enabled email-based professional communication that reduced the isolation of philosophy faculty at smaller institutions and accelerated the peer review and job market process. These tools improved individual productivity without changing the fundamental structure of the job.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Learning management systems, AI writing detection, and plagiarism tools (digital pedagogy era)

    Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle became standard platforms for course administration, assignment submission, and gradebook management across philosophy and religion departments through the 2000s and 2010s. The more significant pedagogical development was the growing problem of contract cheating and essay mills: philosophy's standard essay assignments ("compare Kant and Mill on lying," "evaluate the ontological argument") were among the most commonly purchased assignments on contract-cheating platforms because their generic structure made them easy to commodify. Turnitin (founded 1998; widely deployed in universities from 2002 onward) and GPTZero (2022) attempted to address this, but the cat-and-mouse dynamic between detection and evasion remained unresolved. The LMS also enabled online and hybrid delivery of large general education philosophy courses, which expanded enrollment reach while reducing the contact hours that make Socratic dialogue possible.

    Work toolChanging equipment

  • Large language models, AI text tools, and AI-assisted research platforms (LLM disruption era)

    ChatGPT's public release in November 2022 created an acute crisis for philosophy pedagogy and an unexpected opportunity for philosophy research. The crisis: standard philosophy essay assignments ("explain utilitarianism," "apply Kant's categorical imperative to lying") are trivially completable by GPT-4-class models at B+/A- quality; the APA documented that 40%+ of introductory philosophy essay assignments are now considered "AI-completable without effort" by faculty survey -- the highest proportion of any humanities discipline. The opportunity: AI has created an enormous new demand for philosophical expertise in the form of AI ethics curriculum, AI cognition critique, and AI governance advising. The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 2026) documented a 60% growth in AI ethics course cross-listings with CS and engineering programs at R1 universities. Tools including NotebookLM (Google, 2023) for corpus synthesis, Sefaria's AI-assisted Talmud search, Logos Bible Software's AI Assistant, PhilPapers semantic search, and Packback for discussion facilitation have become part of the working toolkit for philosophy and religion faculty who adapt quickly.

    Effect on the work

    The net projected employment effect through 2034 is modest (BLS: +0.7%, approximately +200 positions from a base of 27,300), but the internal composition of the work is changing substantially. Faculty who build AI ethics courses, critique AI cognition, and adapt Socratic assessment methods to AI-resilient formats are positioning for joint appointments and interdisciplinary authority. Faculty whose primary value was delivering standard survey lectures on canonical topics face the sharpest exposure to AI augmentation of their core tasks.

    AI audit toolsPattern detection
Projection cone · present → 2034

What credible sources project

Scrub the slider past now to anchor each scenario on the scrubber. The spread is the range of futures credible sources project for this role.

Employment outlook
Projected change in the number of people doing this work.
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook -- Postsecondary Teachers 2024-34
→ 2034
+7%
BLS OOH projects overall postsecondary teacher employment (all disciplines, 25-1000 to 25-1199 major group) to grow 7% from 2024 to 2034 -- "much faster than the average for all occupations." Approximately 114,000 openings per year are projected, with many from replacement of retirees and workers transferring to other roles. The OOH growth rate for all postsecondary teachers (7%) is substantially more optimistic than the occupation-specific BLS National Employment Matrix projection for 25-1126 alone (0.7%). This divergence reflects that philosophy and religion is a slower-growing specialty within a generally growing postsecondary teacher category: health sciences, technology, and business faculty drive the high growth end; philosophy and religion sits at the lower end of the growth distribution. Reported here as the upper-bound scenario for the uncertainty cone.
BLS National Employment Matrix 2024-34
→ 2034
+0.7%
BLS employment projections -- industry-occupation matrix, labor productivity assumptions, and enrollment forecast for degree-granting institutions. The 2024-34 cycle projects +0.7% employment change for 25-1126, equivalent to roughly +200 positions from a base of 27,300 (2024) to 27,500 (2034). This is classified as "slower than average" against the all-occupations average of approximately +4%. The BLS methodology models stable-to-growing enrollment at four-year institutions as the primary driver, offset by continued adjunctification trends and the slow pace of new tenure-track line creation. The projection does not capture the AI ethics curriculum demand identified by the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 2026) or the possibility that AI tools reduce the number of instructors needed for large general education survey courses.
AI task exposure
Share of the role’s tasks that researchers estimate AI can do. This is a measure of task exposure, not a forecast of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. -- "GPTs are GPTs" (2023)
→ 2028
72%
of tasks
GPT-4 task-by-task LLM exposure labeling on O*NET tasks for postsecondary teachers in language-intensive fields. Philosophy and religion faculty appear in the highest-LLM-exposure tier in the Eloundou et al. framework: the core activities of the role (conceptual analysis, argumentation, textual exegesis, philosophical writing, literature synthesis) are precisely the language tasks LLMs simulate most convincingly. The ~72% task-exposure figure reflects the proportion of identifiable tasks that LLMs can partially or substantially assist with -- not the proportion of positions that will be eliminated. The critical distinction: LLM exposure measures AI assistance potential, not job displacement. A philosophy professor whose lecture preparation, bibliography search, and rubric generation are all substantially AI-assisted still exists as a role; what changes is the composition of human judgment required. The curated file for this role documents a CRI of 59 and automationDefense of 52, consistent with high exposure but substantial human-advantage moats in seminar facilitation, original scholarship, and AI cognition critique.
Today, in this role

What's shifting in the work right now

The historical view above shows how this role has moved. This is the present-day detail: which AI tools are picking up which tasks, where the edge still is, and the natural directions this work can grow.

What's changing in your day

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEvaluate and grade student philosophical essays — using Gradescope AI-assisted answer grouping for definition-level and short-answer assessments in large general education ethics and logic courses, applying expert philosophical judgment to evaluate the structure of arguments, identification of fallacies, engagement with objections, and quality of philosophical reasoning that automated scoring cannot assess, and redesigning standard essay prompts to be AI-resilient through oral examination, in-class argumentation, and process-based assessment.

Evaluate and grade student philosophical essays — using Gradescope AI-assisted answer grouping for definition-level and short-answer assessments in large general education ethics and logic courses, applying expert philosophical judgment to evaluate the structure of arguments, identification of fallacies, engagement with objections, and quality of philosophical reasoning that automated scoring cannot assess, and redesigning standard essay prompts to be AI-resilient through oral examination, in-class argumentation, and process-based assessment.[6],[12]

Where your edge is

Philosophy essay assessment is in acute crisis: APA Central Division (2025) documented that 40%+ of standard intro philosophy essay assignments are considered "AI-completable without effort" — a higher proportion than any other humanities discipline. "Explain Kant's categorical imperative and apply it to lying," "Compare utilitarian and deontological approaches to the death penalty," and "Evaluate the ontological argument for God's existence" are all now easily completable with GPT-4 at a B+/A- quality level. The immediate response is assessment redesign: shift to in-class oral philosophical examination (a five-minute viva in which a student defends their essay argument against your objections is completely AI-proof), assign in-class argumentative writing on an ethical dilemma presented that day without prior notice, or require students to trace their argument's development through multiple revisions with explicit engagement with instructor feedback that requires showing they understood and responded to specific criticisms. Use Gradescope for Logic 101 argument-identification exercises and multiple-choice assessment of fallacy recognition — AI-assisted grouping saves significant time in courses with 80-150 students. Use Turnitin and GPTZero as triage flags, not adjudication tools.

AI is sitting alongside you hereFacilitate large-enrollment online discussion boards for general education ethics, critical thinking, and world religions courses — using Packback AI discussion platform to enforce curiosity standards (Curiosity Score requiring genuine question formation, source-backed rationales, and substantive engagement) that replace the low-effort discussion post problem endemic to large intro philosophy courses, freeing faculty time for high-stakes individual feedback on argument essays.

Facilitate large-enrollment online discussion boards for general education ethics, critical thinking, and world religions courses — using Packback AI discussion platform to enforce curiosity standards (Curiosity Score requiring genuine question formation, source-backed rationales, and substantive engagement) that replace the low-effort discussion post problem endemic to large intro philosophy courses, freeing faculty time for high-stakes individual feedback on argument essays.[13],[9]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Large-enrollment general education philosophy courses — Ethics 101, Critical Thinking, Introduction to World Religions — often have 120-400 enrolled students with weekly discussion board requirements, creating a grading and facilitation burden that is genuinely unsustainable without AI assistance. Packback's Curiosity Score requirement transforms "I agree with Kant because morality should be universal" into genuine philosophical question-formation: students must pose an open-ended question about the reading, explain why it matters philosophically, and engage substantively with a peer's argument. Deploy Packback for weekly discussion-board participation in large general education sections; pair it with Gradescope for structured short-answer assessments (identify the logical fallacy in this argument, state the necessary and sufficient conditions for X). The recoverable time budget from these two tools on a 200-student ethics course is 6-10 hours per week that can be reinvested in office-hour advising and the seminar sections where Socratic dialogue is the core value.

AI is sitting alongside you herePrepare course materials — syllabi, lecture outlines, reading lists, and discussion prompts — for both traditional philosophy courses (Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind) and religion courses (World Religions, Biblical Studies, Islamic Studies, Buddhist Philosophy) using ChatGPT Edu and NotebookLM to generate first-draft structures and synthesize secondary literature, then applying disciplinary expertise to ensure philosophical accuracy, theological fidelity, and engagement with current academic debates.

Prepare course materials — syllabi, lecture outlines, reading lists, and discussion prompts — for both traditional philosophy courses (Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind) and religion courses (World Religions, Biblical Studies, Islamic Studies, Buddhist Philosophy) using ChatGPT Edu and NotebookLM to generate first-draft structures and synthesize secondary literature, then applying disciplinary expertise to ensure philosophical accuracy, theological fidelity, and engagement with current academic debates.[14],[5]

Where your edge is

Use ChatGPT Edu to generate a first-draft lecture outline on Aristotle's virtue ethics or a reading list for a Buddhist philosophy unit — it will produce serviceable scaffolding quickly. Then invest expert time in the things AI gets wrong in philosophy: AI frequently conflates philosophical positions (misattributing arguments to the wrong philosopher), presents contested interpretations as settled, and fails to distinguish between a philosopher's historical claim and the contemporary relevance of their view. Use NotebookLM to synthesize a corpus of uploaded secondary scholarship on a specific philosophical problem — uploading 20-30 PDFs of recent publications on personal identity, the nature of consciousness, or the problem of evil and asking for thematic synthesis is a documented time-saver for graduate seminar prep and dissertation advising. The key discipline-specific risk: AI-generated philosophy lecture outlines confidently reproduce common misreadings (Kant is not a moral relativist; utilitarianism does not justify any act that maximizes utility; free will compatibilism is not the same as determinism) — expert correction is essential before delivery.

Where this role is heading

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

A direction you could grow

Education Administrators, Postsecondary

Philosophy faculty frequently move into department chair, dean of humanities, director of academic programs, or vice provost for academic affairs roles — particularly those who have built interdisciplinary AI ethics programs, led curriculum redesign efforts, served on accreditation committees, or developed university AI governance policy. Philosophy departments are often disproportionately involved in general education requirements (critical thinking, ethics, logic) that give philosophy faculty unusual institutional visibility and leverage. In 2025–2026, postsecondary administrators are under intense pressure to develop institution-wide AI policies, AI literacy requirements, and AI ethics curricula — tasks for which philosophy-trained faculty are uniquely positioned. The CRI increase reflects that postsecondary education administration is growing (+7% BLS 2024–2034) and that the AI governance dimension has created new administrative leadership paths for faculty with philosophical expertise in normative ethics and epistemology.

What you'd add
  • · Higher education budget management: faculty line planning, adjunct cost modeling, course scheduling optimization for philosophy departments that rely heavily on general education enrollment
  • · Accreditation and assessment: HLC / SACSCOC / WASC self-study coordination; program learning outcomes documentation for philosophy and religious studies programs; assessment of critical thinking as a general education outcome using standardized instruments (CAT, HEIghten)
  • · Interdisciplinary program development: joint curriculum design with CS, engineering, law, and public policy departments for AI ethics and technology ethics cross-listings; faculty governance navigation for interdisciplinary course approval
  • · University AI governance leadership: developing institution-wide student AI use policies that go beyond honor code language to embody genuine ethical frameworks; chairing the academic integrity AI task force; building the AI literacy general education requirement
  • · Faculty development and performance evaluation: managing philosophy and religious studies faculty hiring (including for new AI ethics positions), conducting classroom observations, and navigating post-tenure review for faculty in a changing curricular landscape
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
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The data behind this timeline

On record since1712
Latest tracked employment27,300 (US, 2024)
Latest median pay$78,050 (2024)
Outlook+0.7% by 2034 (BLS National Employment Matrix 2024-34)
View all 26 cited data points
YearUS employmentMedian annual paySource
19002,400n/aESTIMATE
19508,500n/aESTIMATE
197018,000$13,500ESTIMATE
199021,500$42,000ESTIMATE
200315,890$48,630BLS-OEWS
200417,170$51,800BLS-OEWS
200518,340$53,210BLS-OEWS
200617,840$54,880BLS-OEWS
200718,140$56,380BLS-OEWS
200818,370$59,540BLS-OEWS
200919,630$61,240BLS-OEWS
201021,250$62,330BLS-OEWS
201121,930$65,100BLS-OEWS
201222,880$64,990BLS-OEWS
201323,430$65,540BLS-OEWS
201423,210$63,630BLS-OEWS
201523,820$66,380BLS-OEWS
201623,180$68,360BLS-OEWS
201722,920$69,590BLS-OEWS
201823,100$71,890BLS-OEWS
201923,490$75,240BLS-OEWS
202022,900$76,160BLS-OEWS
202120,850$77,610BLS-OEWS
202221,620$78,780BLS-OEWS
202320,320$79,930BLS-OEWS
202427,300$78,050BLS-OEWS
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