The Value of a Humanities Degree: Understanding Career Destinations

A newly-released report out of Oxford University, confirms what many of us already suspected. Namely, that a humanities education provides students with a set of skills that prove to be invaluable over the course of their lives and careers. These include not just familiar skills like communication, critical and strategic thinking, empathy, creative problem solving, and the ability to synthesize complex information and present it to a range of audiences, but also skill like the ability to spot disinformation and think through the ethical implications of emerging technologies. Indeed, the “ability to help people understand what it means to be human” in an age when AI is blurring the line between human and machine seemed to be a strong undercurrent in the report. These skills allow humanities students to build meaningful relationships and be resilient and adaptable in the face of a rapidly changing labor market. As Emma Walmsley, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (A Classics and Modern Languages major at Oxford) nicely summarized: “Being a humanities student at Oxford was foundational – to the curiosity, reserves of courage, and appetite for connectivity I have relied on deeply in life so far.”

The entire report, which is worth a read, is available here:

Originally written by Justin Lorts, July 6, 2023.