Employer Assessment of Importance of Humanities Skills and Recent College Graduates’ Preparation, 2020

Employer Assessment of Importance of Humanities Skills and Recent College Graduates’ Preparation, 202022

Given the variety of occupations performed by humanities graduates, further study is needed to assess how their college coursework prepares them for employment. What research does exist highlights the value to employers of a range of skills thought to be developed in humanities courses. For instance, a recent survey of 500 employers commissioned by the Association of American Colleges & Universities found that a majority of employers considered several such skills—including writing, public speaking, and collaborating with people of different cultures—to be very important for their employees. For every skill, a smaller share of employers believed recent college graduates were “very well prepared” to use the skill in the workplace.23

Endnotes

• 22The preparedness opinions refer to all recent graduates, not just humanities majors.
• 23Ashley Finley, How College Contributes to Workforce Success: Employer Views on What Matters Most (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2021), 16. This study involved a survey of approximately 500 employers chosen to ensure equal representation of firms in terms of size, as well as diversity with respect to industry, control (for-profit, not-for-profit, government, etc.), and geographic scale of operation (local/regional/national/multinational). Because the survey used nonprobability sampling, its findings may not be nationally representative.