Employers Want and Need Humanities and Social Sciences Majors
When It Comes to Future Earnings, Liberal-Arts Grads Might Get the Last Laugh
January 14, 2020, The Chronicle of Higher Education
A recent United States Department of Education report suggests that the forty year ROI (Return on Investment) for liberal arts majors exceeds that of all U.S. college grads by $200,000. Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said that “Employers are looking for employees who can advance in the profession, not just entry level work…that will be the future of the workforce.”
The Most Unexpected Workplace Trend Coming in 2020: the Return of the Liberal Arts Major
November 26, 2019, Inc.com
More research points to the slowing need for tech specializations and the future growth of liberal arts training and degrees in such fields as literature, philosophy and history.
The world’s top economists just made the case for why we still need English majors
October 19, 2019, The Seattle Times
The number of students majoring in English and other Humanities fields has slumped since the Great Recession of 2008 in favor of tech subjects that parents believe will assure their students a good job. But most economists attest that skills and knowledge learned in traditional liberal arts fields lead to better job performance outcomes than what students learn in more specialized fields. For example, Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller has written that what he learned about the Great Depression in a history class was far more useful in understanding the last period of economic and financial turmoil than anything he learned in his economic courses.
The Value of the Liberal Arts in a “Techie” World
January 2019, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
“Why [are] soft skills relevant[?] One of the arguments is, if machines are taking over the really routine stuff, then what's left is the more complex, the more improvisational, the more unscripted tasks. Those things require human specialization….If anything, in this more robot-enhanced, machine learning future, people need to have these soft skills. They need to be curious. They need to have flexibility to continue to be adaptive and focus on these human skills.”
Survey: Employers Want 'Soft Skills' from Graduates
January 17, 2019, Inside Higher Education
“Employers want college graduates who have “soft skills,” such as being a good listener or thinking critically, but they have difficulty finding such candidates… The most in-demand talent among employers was listening skills—74 percent of employers indicated this was a skill they valued. This was followed by attention to detail (70 percent) and effective communication (69 percent). About 73 percent of the employers said that finding qualified candidates was somewhat or very difficult.”
Talking to Employers about Your Degree: The History Discipline Core on the Job Market
January 1, 2019, American Historical Association
“History is a dynamic course of study that will help you become an inventive and capable thinker, researcher, writer, and communicator.”
What Employers Want: Thoughts from a History BA in Business
January 1, 2019, American Historical Association
“I can answer the question ‘what do employers value in history majors?’—more specifically, what does a history major bring to an electric utility like Exelon, or to Tesla, Microsoft, Apple, Lucas film, or Morgan Stanley?—with real confidence and relative precision. We bring perspective on the flux of institutions; we think and write with clarity; we have a grasp of enduring human foibles; and we find delicious relevance in vignettes.”
Data Reveals Why The 'Soft' In 'Soft Skills' Is A Major Misnomer
October 2, 2018, Forbes
This article discusses how those abilities normally termed “soft skills,” like critical thinking, good communication, persuasive writing and teamwork should be re-named “power skills,” because they lead to success in the corporate world. The article asserts that there should be more focus on and appreciation for “power skills,” which, going forward, will be more in demand than “hard skills” like web development, digital literacy and analytics. The article notes that entrepreneur investor, Mark Cuban, predicted that in ten years, “a liberal arts degree in philosophy will be worth more than a traditional programming degree."
Why This Tech CEO Keeps Hiring Humanities Majors
July 15, 2017, Fast Company
“At my company, [Vidyard], as at many tech companies, developers only make up 15–25% of our workforce. While tech businesses are booming, many of the jobs waiting to be filled require broader skill sets than just great engineering chops….the truly irreplaceable jobs—not just of the future but of the present—are the roles that intermingle arts and science. My employees with humanities backgrounds regularly show they’re willing to learn new skills and try new things.”
Not Lost in Translation: The Growing Importance of Foreign Language Skills in the U.S. Job Market (pdf)
March 2017, New American Economy
“...today’s employers are increasingly seeking out multilingual employees who can help them better compete and serve a wide range of customers. Immigrants may very well play an important role filling such labor gaps...The native-born can play an equally important role in meeting this demand, and in recent years a number of states have taken steps to recognize and promote students who thrive in foreign language education.”
A Good Job for a Humanist
February 2017, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
“This broad category of work—this much needed function in the core of the data analytics world that will re-shape every industry and every public sector activity—is crying out for the distinctive capacities of humanists….[There is a] need for people who can categorize, organize, and find meaning in the colorful and flavorful subtleties of human endeavors while avoiding reductive fundamentalism—the naïve idea that every can casually be reduced to some uniform binary code. Left to their own devices, the algorithmic wizards behind the curtain do not know how to figure out what matters. Humanists do.”
