哲学学士学位是通识教育的基础，尤其是对认真，批判性思维的强调。它要求学生审视自己的社会和个人信念与价值观，以便他们更具创造性和责任感。就哲学强调基础问题而言，它也有助于研究其他学科。哲学专业的学生为法学院和其他需要通识教育的专业做好了充分的准备，包括哲学研究生。该系还提供宗教研究的辅修课程，以加深学生对各种宗教传统的理解，以及他们对宗教的性质和含义的看法。
Philosophy is the love of wisdom. The B.A. degree in Philosophy provides students with skills that facilitate success in their professional, private, and communal lives by equipping them to act wisely in a wide variety of environments and circumstances. These skills include being more thoughtful and reflective, thinking more critically, analyzing and appraising their own and other people's beliefs and values, communicating more effectively, reasoning and arguing more authoritatively, being open to similarities, differences, and alternative perspectives, and creatively solving a wide variety of problems. These are skills for success, which is why, ten years after college, on average, philosophy majors earn higher salaries than those who graduate with other liberal arts degrees.1 Moreover, as majoring in philosophy provides skills that are valuable in all kinds of settings, philosophy majors are uniquely well prepared for all of life's challenges, including the 21st Century reality that most people have to follow multiple career paths to succeed.