It must be summer. In anticipation of fall course schedules, several people have asked what I think someone who wants to be a journalist should study.

That’s right: 50. According to J-Source, the journalism website, there are 1,600 J-students at any given time preparing to work in an industry that has lost anywhere from one-third to half of its jobs in the last decade. The U.S. is always slightly ahead of us in trends, and in June the Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire photography staff, replacing it with iPhones for the remaining reporters. Since most reporters shoot about as well as most photogs spell, I’m breathlessly awaiting the next report of their declining circulation.

But apparently those sorts of comments were “killing the dreams” of future journalism students, so I’ve stopped saying things like that. I figure if they don’t read enough news to know that media outlets are dropping faster than Stephen Harper’s approval rating, who am I to point out that it’s unwise to go to trade school to learn a dead trade.

Instead, I tell people the most useful classes I took were all in philosophy.

Yes, the course of study that has long been denigrated as frivolous and useless in the job market has been the part of my education that I lean on again and again. For work and everything else.

Officially, my undergraduate degree was in political science and English, and they were both handy enough — the political history of the Middle East is always relevant, although advanced Kremlin-watching turned out to be a dud. And with the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice this year, I’ve put that decade I spent as a member of the Jane Austen Society to good use.

But a smattering of undergrad philosophy classes taught me something applicable to any and every job: clarity of thought. Name me one aspect of your life that doesn’t benefit from being able to think something through clearly.

A logical education

Because it delivers real skills, philosophy doesn’t go out of fashion the way the vague, trendy subjects do. The University of Windsor just announced it’s closing its Centre for Studies in Social Justice, after 11 years. I suspect some of the problem there may be that no one can actually define “social justice.” And the importance of defining terms to ensure we all mean the same thing when we’re talking is one of those skills I picked up in philosophy.

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