Parents, here’s why you should stop steering your kids away from the humanities

Is your child passionate about the arts and humanities? Strong in English, history, philosophy or a foreign language? Considering a humanities degree? As a parent, you may be wondering whether this sets them on “a road to nowhere”. Given the volatile times we live in, you might push them towards something more obviously “job-ready”.

Here’s why that’s a mistake.

Pitting STEM against the humanities makes little sense – they intersect and complement each other in many ways. Archaeologists answer historical questions using carbon dating. Environmental humanities scholars shape public policy around climate data. Many students recognise these links and combine arts and science in creative ways, building versatile skill sets. Pairing an arts discipline with law, medicine or science has long been an effective strategy for standing out in a competitive job market.

The humanities directly confront many of today’s most urgent problems: climate-change denial, environmental degradation, vaccine scepticism. Solutions to growing social polarisation won’t emerge from the hard sciences alone – these issues are fundamentally cultural. And culture is the domain of the humanities. The arts probe the essential question of what it means to be human, a question that becomes more critical as our humanity faces threats from conflicts, economic inequality and the rise of AI.

As artificial intelligence transforms our world the ethical dimensions of technology become paramount. Who decides how algorithms make decisions that affect people’s lives? How do we ensure AI systems respect human dignity and cultural diversity? These aren’t technical questions – they’re fundamentally humanistic ones. The engineers building tomorrow’s technology need colleagues who can ask the right ethical questions, understand cultural contexts, and communicate complex ideas to diverse audiences. This is where humanities graduates excel.

Yes, the humanities teach critical thinking, but there’s so much more. Disciplines like classical studies, art history and archaeology train students to evaluate evidence, consider who is speaking and why, and make connections across diverse data sets – essential in our complex, fast-changing world. If your goal is to become a brain surgeon or architect, study medicine or architecture. For everyone else – including those keeping their options open – the humanities shape well-rounded individuals deeply aware of the social, political and ethical implications of their work. Some humanities students come with additional superpowers: exceptional writing, persuasive abilities and compassion.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: money. According to the 2024 Graduate Outcomes Survey, humanities graduates in Australia earn a median of $73,100 straight out of university – more than business graduates at $72,000. Three years after graduation the advantage becomes even clearer: humanities graduates’ employment outcomes improve substantially over time, with creative arts, communications and humanities graduates showing marked increases compared with more vocational fields. The narrative that humanities degrees lead to poverty simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

More importantly, Australian business leaders already know the value of humanities graduates. Two out of three chief executives of Australia’s ASX200 listed companies hold degrees in the social sciences, as do similar proportions of senior public servants and federal parliamentarians. Our current prime minister, Anthony Albanese, studied arts and economics at the University of Sydney. At Westpac, Brian Hartzer, who studied European history at Princeton, replaced Gail Kelly, who holds an arts degree in history and Latin, as chief executive.

Jennifer Westacott, who holds a bachelor of arts (honours) from UNSW and served as chief executive of the Business Council of Australia for 12 years, has stated that all successful 21st-century leaders need “some form of humanities perspective and education” – skills like critical thinking, synthesis, judgment and ethical understanding.

A 2018 Deloitte Access Economics report found that 72 per cent of Australian employers demand communication skills when hiring, yet only 27 per cent of candidates possess them. The transferable skills humanities graduates bring – teamwork, communication, problem-solving, innovation, emotional intelligence – are precisely what drives business success. And humanities students have a clear advantage in fields ranging from journalism and teaching to public policy, the creative industries and consulting firms, which have always recruited arts graduates alongside science students.

“What can you do with an arts degree?” I’m asked this constantly at Info Day by prospective students and their concerned parents. The answer is easy. Nothing is more powerful than a person with passion and drive who recognises pressing problems and acts to solve them. If this is what you imagine for your child, a humanities degree is an excellent choice.

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