Research by the University of Oxford and the Aspen Institute shows that humanities degrees develop understanding and improve job prospects
Studying the humanities – subjects such as philosophy and history, art and literature, theatre and music – provides students with the critical tools needed to understand the major transformations currently affecting the world, while also enhancing their career paths throughout their entire working life. This is what a recent research study entitled “The value of the Humanities” shows – a study by the University of Oxford, whereby the career profiles and paths of over 9,000 humanities graduates from the prestigious British institution, aged between 20 and 54 years and who found employment between 2000 and 2019, were analysed. The results were then refined with data from more than a hundred in-depth interviews and further scrutinised and updated once the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end.
According to the report, the pandemic accelerated trends towards automation, digitalisation and flexible work models, and humanities graduates show a degree of “resilience” that makes them particularly suitable to this new state of affairs, as well as critical and planning skills, original thinking and adaptability to change – radical change, even – all of which befit recent developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Dan Grimley, Head of Humanities at the University of Oxford, states that, “This report confirms what I and so many humanities graduates will already recognise: that the skills and experiences conferred by studying a humanities subject can transform their working life, their life as a whole, and the world around them.”
True, the new generations are especially attracted by scientific subjects and technological specialisations, in the belief that they’ll improve their career chances (this is happening in Italy, too, as shown by the results of the 15th Report on employment opportunities by the Interuniversity Consortium AlmaLaurea, which sees engineering degrees as the most in demand by enterprises and as such leading to better remunerated jobs, Il Sole24Ore, 13 June).
Yet, the graduates interviewed as part of the Oxford research study said that the humanities equipped them with sophisticated tools to better understand and manage such a transformed context through “critical and strategic thinking, the ability to synthesise complex information, empathy, creative problem-solving”, beneficial qualities that also “widely contribute” to bettering social conditions, provide answers to the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence and enhance the “appreciation of common wealth” – all the key elements required by a “paradigm shift” leading to sustainable, environmental and social development, as well as a better economic balance.
The Oxford research actually consolidates the thought, long held by the best economics literature, that we should stop seeing humanities and sciences as “two opposite cultures” and rather opt for a so-called “polytechnic culture” able to build new meaning and beneficially impact the quality of development (as often mentioned in these blog posts).
A “polytechnic culture” that doesn’t fragment knowledge and underlines the merits of a multidisciplinary education, and, we should add, one not merely related to studying a degree but also as an attitude influencing one’s whole career – an attitude bent on “learning to learn”, an inclination to combine knowledge and skills in order to handle all these quick and radical changes sweeping over science, technology, the environment, geopolitics and the economy.
The best kind of education for such an era marked by transitions and metamorphoses, acquired through integrated, or multidisciplinary, courses, and by training engineers-cum-philosophers and scientists mindful of the ethical and social consequences that their labours may cause. These are the values that the study programmes offered by ITS (higher technical institutes) and universities should emphasise and that enterprises should reward, as we move towards a new era of “industrial and digital humanism”. Values, in fact, of which the best Italian companies are already familiar and which they have turned into unique assets to compete on the most demanding international markets.
These same themes also informed the recently published 2023 Report by the Aspen Institute Italia’s permanent observatory entitled “Nuovi lavori e nuova formazione” (“New jobs and new training”).
In fact, the Aspen report asserts that “across all sectors and countries, the need arises for a non-linear approach in terms of education and employment, as future jobs will no longer require predefined skills but rather the ability to adapt to a complex, dynamic and rapidly changing world. Unlike the widespread tendency to hyper-simplification, the employment sphere actually needs new and complex competences, as well as critical thinking and a flexible attitude, key cultural mainstays.”
Hence, in view of the progressive “digitalisation” that will permeate our personal and professional life, education must aim to nurture the development of a “scientific” attitude towards the real world, and it’d be “beneficial to start experimenting and apply evolving critical thinking and logical reasoning to interactions with Generative Artificial Intelligence devices.”
The Aspen Institute reiterates that “There is a need to regulate and guide the dissemination of GenAI, an increasingly game-changing phenomenon that is pervading all dimensions and all countries, not merely those particularly technologically advanced. We need to fully explore the limitations inherent in GenAI (biases, overconfidence, errors, and so on), aiming to carefully manage its various applications, and not only in the educational sphere.”
A clear conclusion that echoes that of the Oxford study: “This highly evolving context will lead to a greater demand for skills related to the social sciences and the humanities, which up to now have been rather neglected within the basic skills range.”
(Photo Getty Images)
Studying the humanities – subjects such as philosophy and history, art and literature, theatre and music – provides students with the critical tools needed to understand the major transformations currently affecting the world, while also enhancing their career paths throughout their entire working life. This is what a recent research study entitled “The value of the Humanities” shows – a study by the University of Oxford, whereby the career profiles and paths of over 9,000 humanities graduates from the prestigious British institution, aged between 20 and 54 years and who found employment between 2000 and 2019, were analysed. The results were then refined with data from more than a hundred in-depth interviews and further scrutinised and updated once the COVID-19 pandemic came to an end.
According to the report, the pandemic accelerated trends towards automation, digitalisation and flexible work models, and humanities graduates show a degree of “resilience” that makes them particularly suitable to this new state of affairs, as well as critical and planning skills, original thinking and adaptability to change – radical change, even – all of which befit recent developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Dan Grimley, Head of Humanities at the University of Oxford, states that, “This report confirms what I and so many humanities graduates will already recognise: that the skills and experiences conferred by studying a humanities subject can transform their working life, their life as a whole, and the world around them.”
True, the new generations are especially attracted by scientific subjects and technological specialisations, in the belief that they’ll improve their career chances (this is happening in Italy, too, as shown by the results of the 15th Report on employment opportunities by the Interuniversity Consortium AlmaLaurea, which sees engineering degrees as the most in demand by enterprises and as such leading to better remunerated jobs, Il Sole24Ore, 13 June).
Yet, the graduates interviewed as part of the Oxford research study said that the humanities equipped them with sophisticated tools to better understand and manage such a transformed context through “critical and strategic thinking, the ability to synthesise complex information, empathy, creative problem-solving”, beneficial qualities that also “widely contribute” to bettering social conditions, provide answers to the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence and enhance the “appreciation of common wealth” – all the key elements required by a “paradigm shift” leading to sustainable, environmental and social development, as well as a better economic balance.
The Oxford research actually consolidates the thought, long held by the best economics literature, that we should stop seeing humanities and sciences as “two opposite cultures” and rather opt for a so-called “polytechnic culture” able to build new meaning and beneficially impact the quality of development (as often mentioned in these blog posts).
A “polytechnic culture” that doesn’t fragment knowledge and underlines the merits of a multidisciplinary education, and, we should add, one not merely related to studying a degree but also as an attitude influencing one’s whole career – an attitude bent on “learning to learn”, an inclination to combine knowledge and skills in order to handle all these quick and radical changes sweeping over science, technology, the environment, geopolitics and the economy.
The best kind of education for such an era marked by transitions and metamorphoses, acquired through integrated, or multidisciplinary, courses, and by training engineers-cum-philosophers and scientists mindful of the ethical and social consequences that their labours may cause. These are the values that the study programmes offered by ITS (higher technical institutes) and universities should emphasise and that enterprises should reward, as we move towards a new era of “industrial and digital humanism”. Values, in fact, of which the best Italian companies are already familiar and which they have turned into unique assets to compete on the most demanding international markets.
These same themes also informed the recently published 2023 Report by the Aspen Institute Italia’s permanent observatory entitled “Nuovi lavori e nuova formazione” (“New jobs and new training”).
In fact, the Aspen report asserts that “across all sectors and countries, the need arises for a non-linear approach in terms of education and employment, as future jobs will no longer require predefined skills but rather the ability to adapt to a complex, dynamic and rapidly changing world. Unlike the widespread tendency to hyper-simplification, the employment sphere actually needs new and complex competences, as well as critical thinking and a flexible attitude, key cultural mainstays.”
Hence, in view of the progressive “digitalisation” that will permeate our personal and professional life, education must aim to nurture the development of a “scientific” attitude towards the real world, and it’d be “beneficial to start experimenting and apply evolving critical thinking and logical reasoning to interactions with Generative Artificial Intelligence devices.”
The Aspen Institute reiterates that “There is a need to regulate and guide the dissemination of GenAI, an increasingly game-changing phenomenon that is pervading all dimensions and all countries, not merely those particularly technologically advanced. We need to fully explore the limitations inherent in GenAI (biases, overconfidence, errors, and so on), aiming to carefully manage its various applications, and not only in the educational sphere.”
A clear conclusion that echoes that of the Oxford study: “This highly evolving context will lead to a greater demand for skills related to the social sciences and the humanities, which up to now have been rather neglected within the basic skills range.”
(Photo Getty Images)