SHAPE-ing work: how humanities are the guide to fulfilling careers. From the editorial:

Though STEM subjects undoubtedly bear great value, they’re only part of the equation. Our obsession with them has created a warped understanding of how the labor market works, and as we face the most grueling economic slump since the Great Depression, it’s paramount we widen our perspective.

Yes, the future of work will be data-centric, technology-based and digital, but the STEM-skilled portion of the workforce needs a non-STEM-skilled contingent to truly thrive and to balance it out. Human agility, emotional intelligence and creativity will never become redundant. Neither will foreign languages and other core transferable skills, like an ability to communicate, reason and think critically. We simply can’t afford to test that hypothesis….

Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy, says that like STEM, SHAPE subjects are heterogenous, “but their shared focus on people and societies generates crucial ideas, insights, expertise and understanding, which together have a deep impact in a huge variety of ways”.

He points to the creative industries in the U.K. as a prime example of why SHAPE skills matter. It’s one of the country’s fastest-growing sectors and today contributes about £110 billion to the economy a year, but “we overlook the creative industries because they are comprised of many small, fast-growing entrepreneurial companies”….

Writing in the Observer newspaper recently, Peter Bazalgette, the chair of U.K. broadcaster ITV, noted that Covid-19 had truly revealed the risks of undervaluing the subjects historically referred to as “soft” and focusing too much on STEM skills.

He says that when it comes to tackling the disease, we’re constantly told that it’s a matter of science, but that’s only part of the story….

“The television entertainment, the J.K. Rowling children’s story released online and the digital theatre that all lift our spirits in lockdown – these are the product of our thriving creative arts,” Bazalgette says. “Science, we hope, keeps us alive,” he concludes. “But the arts and humanities keep us sane.”

For more on SHAPE, see here.