“What might the factors be that contribute to [logic’s] lack of diversity?

At the undergraduate level, students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds may lack information about [the philosophy major or about logic as a possible field of specialization]. In some cases, less-privileged students may lack the opportunity to take [logic at all (for example, because there are not logic specialists at their local institutions or because logic is not even included as a possible area of specialization). It may also] be the case that a successful [application to a university with more opportunities to learn logic] has more obscure or inaccessible requirements (for example, advanced math courses […]), or that it relies more heavily on professional mentorship than other fields (and access to mentorship can be skewed by socioeconomic background; e.g. Jack 2016). [In general, students with less competitive profiles, because of lack of access, information, and/or opportunities, may be disproportionately from underrepresented groups.]

Alternatively, [it might be the case that logic specialists] tend to have [more] lucrative outside options when compared to academia. [In my personal experience, I know of students who moved out from logic into computing, during their graduate studies or shortly after getting their degrees, because they could not afford waiting for one of the very few job openings in logic.]

It may also be the case that the approach … commonly favoured in [both graduate undergraduate or high school logic] teaching, and/or the culture of the [logical] profession, are disproportionately off-putting or exclusionary to [minorities and other unprivileged people, so that] curricular reform to broaden introductory logic classes and connect them more closely to the real world [may increase] the number of [college students from these backgrounds in logic] courses.

In addition, the language commonly used in [logic] – and the values implicit in this language, whether intentionally or unintentionally – may be off-putting to students from [marginalized groups.]”

Assistant Professor in Work and Organization Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Anna Stansbury recently published an article on “The US economics profession’s socioeconomic diversity problem”. When I read the section “What might the factors be that contribute to economics’ lack of socioeconomic diversity?” I noticed that most of what she said there applied also to my field, philosophical logic, so I borrowed her words, put “logic” where she says “economics” and added a couple of comments to get the text above.