When it comes to post-secondary students majoring in fields such as history, literature or psychology, we often hear the same question from parents — and even from humanities students themselves: “What can you do with a humanities degree?”
In other words, what are the prospects for employability for humanities grads?
On LinkedIn each year, Dan Schawbel, a New York Times bestselling author and managing partner of Workplace Intelligence — which describes itself as a research and advisory firm helping human resources professionals adapt to trends, drive performance and prepare for the future — lists workplace trends to watch for in the coming year. In 2020, Schawbel made this prediction about humanities degrees: “While liberal arts majors have lower starting salaries, their salaries rise much quicker over the course of their lives than STEM majors,” adding that liberal arts skills are the “least likely to be automated.”
Many tech CEOs who come from a humanities background themselves are happy to testify to the usefulness of these degrees, which are often perceived as “lightweight.”
Writing for McMaster University’s online “The Conversation,” Anna Moro, associate dean of humanities at the university, says she doesn’t know why “precious and frequently undervalued” skills such as communication, observation, empathy and logical thinking are called “soft skills.”
Moro says she prefers to call them “essential skills,” because we all need them every day. “They are the foundational skills that allow us to learn and live and work productively with other people. They are the skills that determine our chances of succeeding.”
Other researchers studying the value of liberal arts programs agree essential skills are the ones most sought by some of the largest, most successful organizations.
In another Linkedin post, executive coach Jessica Schubert points out that employers in the 21st century recognize that future leaders are people who can understand and communicate about the world around them, who can see the whole picture and find ways to fit into it, and that students learn to do this by studying the humanities, which have somehow fallen from the nest of subjects considered most worth studying.
As an example, RBC Royal Bank took a year-long, cross-country look at what Canada’s job market will be like in the future. In its report — Humans Wanted: How Canadian Youth Can Thrive in an Age of Disruption — it said it expects to see increasing demand for foundational skills such as critical thinking, co-ordination, social perceptiveness, active listening and complex problem-solving.
It said the Canadian economy is expected to add 2.4 million jobs over the next four years, all of which will require this new mix of skills, and global competencies such as cultural awareness, language and adaptability will be in demand.
The report said virtually all job openings will place significant importance on judgment and decision-making and more than two thirds will value an ability to manage people and resources.
The report confirms what many business leaders have been saying for years: Educators should be leaning harder on the humanities to build those foundational skills in graduates — not just through degree programs in the humanities, but also by incorporating more humanistic teaching into STEM and business education.
Investor Mark Cuban, speaking at an NBA All-Star Technology Summit in New Orleans, predicted that the employment market of the near future will demand fewer hard skills, since technical tasks are increasingly being performed by computers. Instead, he said, we’ll need more people who can put information into a human context.
In a New Yorker article entitled Technology Alone is Not Enough, writer Jonah Lehrer quotes Steve Jobs, late co-founder and CEO of Apple, as saying: “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”
A multi-institutional study conducted across five medical schools in the United States and posted on the online National Library of Medicine found that trainee doctors who were also educated in the humanities, literature, music, theatre and visual arts had higher levels of personal qualities such as empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, emotional intelligence and self-efficacy.
Leading venture capitalist Scott Hartley made the argument in the title of his Financial Times Business Book of the Month: The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
