Future graduates will need creativity and empathy

– not just technical skills

By: Natalie Brett

Rapidly advancing technology, including automation and AI and its impact on

education, skills and learning in the UK, is a subject of much debate for universities. How can
institutions equip students with the skills they need to succeed in a changing jobs market? It’s
a valid question, though often the answers are the problem.
Since technology is driving these changes, there’s an assumption that the government should
keep focusing on Stem subjects. These are often referred to as “hard skills”, which are
prioritised in primary school and right through to university level. In the meantime, “soft skills”
– which are already disadvantaged by the term’s connotations – are being relegated even further
down the pecking order in terms of curriculum must-haves.
This is a mistake. Much evidence suggests that soft skills are far more beneficial to
graduates than is currently acknowledged. Research from Harvard University on the global jobs
market has shown that Stem-related careers grew strongly between 1989 and 2000, but have
stalled since. In contrast, jobs in the creative industries – the sector probably most associated
with the need for soft skills – in the UK rose nearly 20% to 1.9m in the five years to June 2016.
Soft skills are in fact increasingly in demand in the workplace: Google cites creativity,
leadership potential and communication skills as top prerequisites for both potential and current
employees.
So why, in an age cited as the “fourth industrial revolution”, are soft skills so highly
sought after? With the rapid evolution of technology, a focus on hard skills leaves students
vulnerable to change, as these often have a shorter shelf life.
According to research by the World Economic Forum, more than one in four adults
reported a mismatch between their skills and those needed for their job role. Although technical
skills, such as learning to code, can be taught and assessed more easily and soft skills take time
to develop and are more complex in nature, the latter can turn out to be more beneficial in the
long term. If taught well, these skills should enable students to adapt to change more easily,
gain a greater understanding of people and the world around them, and ultimately progress
further in their chosen career.
Of course, technical, practical and more easily quantifiable skills are important but
without the curriculum placing equal, if not greater, importance on soft skills, our governments
and education systems are missing a huge trick. Hard skills may help a student get a job in a
particular industry, but soft skills will help them disrupt it, creating change for the better and
achieving a wider impact in their chosen field.
To return to the Google example, many of the company’s top “characteristics of
success” are soft skills: being a good coach, communicating and listening well, possessing
insights into other points of view, being supportive of one’s colleagues, critical thinking and
problem solving, and being able to make connections across complex ideas. It’s these
fundamentally human emotional and social skills which should be nurtured, developed and
celebrated as the key to future success for students and society in general.
Many universities have embraced this, teaching students soft skills such as critical thinking,
idea generation and interdisciplinary ways of working alongside hard skills. But the issue goes
much deeper: it needs to be tackled across the entire education system, so that by the time
students reach university level they are already familiar with the importance of, and the qualities
needed to develop, these essential skills.
With enrolment in arts and humanities degrees in decline and the government’s
continued focus on technical Stem subjects, the value of soft skills may be in danger of being
lost along the way. Perhaps a good place to start would be a reframing of the language we use
to describe these skills as, if the evidence is correct, they’re not so “soft” after all.
www.theguardian.com