Recent reports
Find out what some of the top universities, businesses and publishers have to say about the damaging narrative surrounding Arts and Humanities degrees.
STORYCRAFT - The importance of narrative and narrative skills in business
The Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance at Oxford University Department of Education (SKOPE)
Business leaders believe there is a danger of narrative skills being lost. They are not wrong. The arts and humanities, a major source of these skills, are sometimes caricatured as unnecessary to the economy. This new research points to the siloisation of education as having an additional effect: STEM students do not have the opportunities they need to learn storytelling themselves. The combination of these two factors risks entrenching a binary divide, and, therefore, a general under-skilling of our management resources.
New research shows how studying the humanities can benefit young people’s future careers and wider society
Oxford University
Studying a humanities degree at university gives young people vital skills which benefit them throughout their careers and prepare them for changes and uncertainty in the labour market, according to new research by Oxford University.
The Arts And Humanities Deliver Untapped Value For The Future Of Work
Forbes
Forbes explains how the skills provided by humanities degrees are highly sought after for AI innovation. Skills such as the ability to analyse, question and monitor innovation are essential in order for technology to serve humanity effectively.
Qualified for the Future: quantifying demand for the arts, humanities and social science skills
The British Academy
The British Academy reports on how employment, skills, and growth are influenced by our local and global environments, political instability, and demographic shifts. Their report outlines how the arts, humanities, and social sciences are hailed as essential, providing the tools to understand human behaviour, societal functioning, and historical insights, all while analysing the ever-changing world and global interactions between nations, regions, and cultures.
How the arts and humanities are crucial to responsible AI
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
Arts and Humanities graduates possess unique skills that empower them to create prompts that fully utilise AI's capabilities, facilitating more contextually rich conversations and optimising performance. UKRI highlights the key values for AI's continuous growth: “Every vast new social power that we invent, from the written word to the steam engine, must be guided and shaped by humane values if we expect it to enable human flourishing. Values like justice, openness, honesty, creativity, care, wisdom and responsibility must continually find new expression in our techniques and artefacts.”
The Future Computered
Microsoft president Brad Smith and EVP of AI and researcher Harry Shum
As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.
No form of education is a rip off: The crackdown should be on narratives that it is
Professor Mary Vincent, Vice President for Education at the University of Sheffield
It is important to make the point that the knowledge and transferable skills taught via degree programmes are an important part of the UK’s future prosperity. Education, whether academic or vocational, has a critical role to play in how young people and those changing careers can give shape to their personal futures. A continuing rhetoric that bashes the value of a university degree is not helpful to anyone – to graduates, to universities or to wider society.
The arts and humanities: rejecting the zero-sum game
HEPI
Much of the current debate around the arts and humanities centres on their efficacy in producing economically active graduates. As the research cited above indicates, they do that very successfully. Yet these subjects have other roles to play as well. Yes, they equip students for success in the world of work – unequivocally so. But they also improve quality of life, enhance society, and produce informed and engaged citizens. Education is not a zero-sum game, forcing students to choose between economic security or cultural enrichment. The arts and humanities offer both.
These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow – and how long it takes to learn them
World Economic Forum
In our new world of flexible working, the constant development of technology in the workplace and a global financial crisis, the World Economic Forum explains how employers are becoming increasingly aware of the need for employees to have skills in "self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility." Skills which are all recognised in Arts and Humanities graduates.
Understanding the career paths of AHSS graduates in the UK and their contribution to the economy
The British Academy
Comprising approximately 46% of the 2.32 million university students in the United Kingdom , 55% of global leaders and 58% of FTSE Executives2 , AHSS graduates are a core focus for the British Academy’s objective of promoting the public value of the humanities and social sciences.
What Jobs Do People With an English Degree End Up Doing?
English and Media centre
English and Humanities graduates sometimes take a while to settle on their career paths, as these stories reveal, but once they have discovered what they want to do, they often go into interesting and challenging roles in a range of different spheres. Their stories reveal what their undergraduate studies in English have contributed to their working lives.
Improve Your Salary And Career By Speaking A Second Language
Forbes
If you speak a second (or third or fourth...) language, you may be way ahead in terms of your cognition and your career. And if you don’t, it may be an especially good investment of your time and effort—because the payoffs for being bi-lingual or multi-lingual are significant in terms of everything from pay and performance to your thinking and your relationships.