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Originally Posted by yaaarrrgg  But couldn't something similar could be said of most any academic discipline? To "do" or to "teach?"
Personally, I'm a software engineer and I think there's a lot of overlap with my degree (abstract analysis and symbolic logic is especially handy). In fact I'd argue that a degree in computer science is in fact what's totally useless, since all the information one needs is online, for free, and is obsolete in 5 years anyway! 
More thoughts on non-academic careers: Publications: A NON-ACADEMIC CAREER? The Philosophy Major's Handbook |
I think that you are quite right in that philosophy is very useful in many different fields. All I'm saying is that philosophy AS a field is a self-perpetuating cycle. I've had some arguments with philosophy majors, and while they were good at word play and naming fallacies, they were lacking a lot of knowledge about the topic at hand and so they didn't really have anything to base the argument on. If you're going to argue about science, you need to know a little more than high school level science. If all you ever study is the art of arguing, you miss out on the facts required to build a good argument.