Question about a certain degree?

Hi,

I am an Eastern European high school student thinking about pursuing English philology as a college major. If I were to pursue this degree here in Eastern Europe, would it be recognized in the USA?

Recognized in what way? If you earn a degree from a good university or college, people around the world will know what it means. Whether it will qualify you for what you want to do in the future probably has more to do with the subject matter and the degree than with the school.

No, the original poster knows what he talks about. He means recognized formally. Many countries do not formally recognize degrees from most other countries. If you have a medical degree from Algeria, for example, you most likely have to complete a second degree in Sweden to be allowed to work as a doctor in Sweden, while a British degree qualifies you as it is, for instance.

I have a friend with an archivist degree from Sweden, and she has had to take numerous more courses in the US to qualify for archivist jobs in the US.

I think a lot would depend on what sort of job one wanted. Most US states have their own requirements for teachers that do not match even neighboring states.

Philology degrees are not common in the USA and almost nonexistent other than in classics. I would reckon that it would be viewed as a general humanities degree here.

How common philology degrees are or are not, and they are NOT restricted to classical languages, the real question is what the original poster means by "English philology". My M.A. is in Germanic Philology. To earn this I studied Old English, Old Norse, old and Middle High German, the history and structure of all three, and literature in all three AFTER some linguistics courses. Oh, and a reading knowledge of medieval Latin was also a requirement. Philology can mean different things to different people. "English philology" from an Eastern European vantage point could well be good background for teaching English in a non-English-speaking country, but I don't know how helpful it would be in the US except as a general humanities degree, as PeterKein suggests. On the other hand, it's a fascinating field of study 8-)

What are you planning to do with the degree? I think that a lot depends on that.