Arts and Humanities degrees are increasingly criticized in policy contexts for failing to provide students with the knowledge and skills that are valued in the labor market and for failing to provide graduates with adequate financial returns on their educational investments. Despite this criticism, the reality is that in many instances Humanities graduates are able to navigate the labor market very successfully and flexibly, choosing their career pathways based on their own interests and ambitions.

It is important to consider the wider contributions the Humanities make to society, particularly emphasizing the role the Humanities play in framing debates and bringing understanding to key issues in society, from bringing historical perspectives into current affairs to providing insight into the ethics of artificial intelligence, just to mention a couple of examples.

Humanities degrees provide individuals with the transferable skills needed to successfully navigate difficult and changeable labor markets. This is at odds with current policy discourse which increasingly criticizes Humanities subjects for failing to meet workforce skills demands or for providing graduates with adequate financial returns.

The study of Arts and Humanities brings learners an important piece of opportunity: individual flexibility and a wide range of employment opportunities available to students and learners after graduation. That flexibility is rooted in a combination of transferable skills developed during their degrees (particularly communication, critical thinking, research skills, confidence, and resilience), work experience and extracurricular activities.

Analyzing a poem or a piece of art requires a larger view of the world, a more flexible understanding of what art or literature or history means to our world. That flexibility remains throughout a student career trajectory, supplemented by skills and experiences those learners developed at work, allowing them to move freely, and sometimes radically, across roles and sectors.

COVID-19 accelerated changes to the nature of work related to digitalization, automation, AI, and flexible working arrangements, and those Humanities degrees will serve graduates well in the current competitive and changeable post-COVID-19 labor market. Employers who have hired Humanities students often highlight that strong communication skills, critical thinking, and research skills will always be required in the labor market. With increased digitalization and automation in work, these “human skills” will only become more important as they are critical to human relations and interactions, which cannot be automated.

Many of those Arts and Humanities degrees are fundamental to the formation of a wide range of skills, primarily transferable skills, particularly: communication and argumentation, critical thinking, research skills, and the ability to process complex information quickly, as well as creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.

These students normally deploy their transferable skills in the workplace through an epistemological framework developed through their degrees: skills are contextualized through subject specific knowledge, from history, theology, philosophy, to English, French, Spanish literature and languages.

As a product of a Humanities education myself, I have always felt that my degrees were a key part of my evolution as a human being, the background and education that helped me propagate the public contributions of Humanities in society. There is a wider social, political and economic value of the Arts and the Humanities that higher education institutions and employers should recognize and value.