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The human touch
Arts and humanities degrees can be more valuable in the long run, as careers become more fluid.
Peter Acton interviewed by James Wells
Arts and humanities degrees are more valuable for getting graduates jobs than purely technical degrees, a humanities advocacy group says.
Statistics from Graduate Careers Australia show that rates of graduate employment have been steadily declining in recent years decreasing from 76.3 per cent of graduates achieving fulltime employment in their first four months out of university in 2012, to 68.1 per cent last year. Furthermore, both sides of federal politics are encouraging future university students to take up science, technology, engineering and mathematics( STEM)-based degrees. But Dr Peter Acton, president of Humanities 21, said a key to boosting graduate employment numbers is to get more students into humanities, arts and social science degrees. Although he didn’ t discourage students from pursuing STEM degrees, he said arts and humanities give graduates soft skills such as clear expression of self, argument making and logical thinking something he said a purely technical or scientific education fails to achieve.
“[ Environmentalist and author ] Tim Flannery is on record as saying he was a better scientist because his undergraduate degree was in early English,” Acton said.“ There’ s quite an affinity between the humanities and science. You’ re looking to develop hypotheses, to come up with creative ways of thinking about a problem that other people haven’ t necessarily had before, and then to find good logical ways of testing to know whether you’ re on the right track.”
Acton says as technology continues to disrupt industries, many forward-thinking employers are looking for graduates who can adapt quickly to new ideas and
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