On employability

Universities that gut the Humanities in their pursuit of so-called “employability” are optimizing for a job market that is already on the verge of being transformed. In 2022, IBM pointed out that while technical skills previously had a “shelf life” of 15 years, this has been cut down to five years with very niche technical skills becoming outdated in as little as 2.5 years.

Many companies have understood this trend, and this is the reason why corporate training budgets have been growing. The obvious implication is that employers are assuming an increasingly bigger role in developing and upskilling their workforces. They need to stay on top and have learned to accept that universities and other institutions of higher learning, even in the developed world, cannot keep abreast with the way industries and workplaces are being disrupted by technology.

The oft-repeated argument that the Humanities are a luxury we cannot afford because employers prefer job-ready technical graduates is seriously flawed. Employers are already spending their own money to build technical skills in-house, after hiring people they believe are highly trainable and have the capacity to navigate the increasingly complex workplace. So much resources are being invested in the upskilling to AI and cloud technology, but not in teaching people how to write effectively, argue a position, think historically, recognize ethical dilemmas, or explore different perspectives. It is assumed that people to be hired have these capabilities already, and can continue building on them largely on their own.

A person with the right academic background can be trained to use the programming language Python in a bootcamp, if the organization sees the need for it. But what about the more durable and layered intellectual skills needed to make sense of data, to frame problems, to read complex texts, and to synthesize diverse viewpoints? At higher levels of the organization, you might be able to upskill a software engineer into machine learning, but how do you upskill into wisdom in such things as trade-offs, questions of ethics, managing conflicts, stakeholder engagement, and understanding historical patterns?

These are all capabilities acquired over years of exposure to various forms of knowledge and the great diversity of human experience. The right response to the challenge of employability is therefore not gutting the Humanities curriculum but coming up with better versions of it, one particularly adapted to the constantly evolving world of work.

(The author is the current of Chancellor of the University of the Philippines – Iloilo City and Miagao campuses)