Bunkei Daigaku Kyoiku ha Shigoto no Yaku ni Tatsunoka (Is humanities and social science education at university useful for work? - Investigation into its occupational relevance)

One day, at a campus meeting, I heard the dean of the Faculty of Humanities of a national university in Japan proudly declare to the lecture hall full of high-school students, “You will not learn anything useful for work by studying at this department.” The implication was that the raison d'etre of the department was a pure pursuit of academics, and that it was more enlightened than studying at departments considered “useful for work.” Listening to this, I was irritated.
 
That faculty dean and university faculty staff, including myself, do the work of pursuing academics. Therefore, pure academics is in itself “useful for work.” However, the majority of young people graduating from university and venturing into society will be working outside of academia. I felt it was irresponsible for a faculty member who made a living from academics to declare to these young people that “what you learn here will not help with your work.”
 
Outside the university too, opinions supporting a decrease the role of humanities and social sciences in university education, which are “useless for work,” are growing. Specifically, it was proclaimed for national universities that “for teacher training departments and graduate schools, humanities and social sciences faculties and graduate schools... we will make efforts to abolish such organizations and switch to fields with greater social demand” (Notice from the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, June 8, 2015). Loudly stating that “you will not learn anything useful for work by attending this department” grants approval to this external pressure. Furthermore, may it not also justify abolition or diminution? The irritation I felt was because of the faculty dean’s insensitivity to the meaning contained in her words.
 
How does one behave less insensitively? If I exclaimed that “liberal arts education is useful for work,” it would not be very persuasive in today’s Japanese society as the perception that it is not useful dominates—with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as well as the faculty dean. I felt it necessary to investigate and present whether it truly is not useful, the extent to which it is useful, and how it can be of use. This book summarizes the results of a pilot study of this research.
 
However, it is difficult to ascertain whether education is useful for work, and several methods exist to this end. In this book, I attempt to approach this subject from different angles and methods of analysis using various data (all of which have room for improvement).
 
Two methods can be used to grasp whether it is useful or not. The first is by directly asking the research participants: “Is it useful?” The second method analyzes the relationship between the quality of university education experienced by the research participants and their job performance. The former is a subjective perception, while the latter is an analysis of an objective relationship. However, social convention influences subjective perception. In Chapters 5 and 6 of this book, one finds that the degree of recognition that humanities and social sciences education is “useful” is not high overall based on the results of the analysis of subjective perceptions.
 
On the other hand, in Chapter 2, using two datasets—a survey tracking graduates from the time of graduation to a few years later and another survey of those who are already working adults—I examined the objective relationship between the characteristics of the university education experienced and skills demonstrated at work after graduation. This confirmed that taking many classes with content that enables one to realize a relationship with future work while still enrolled at university as well as classes involving a high degree of interaction with students and teachers heightens various skills that are displayed in workplaces after graduation (three skill variables were used in the analysis: information, judgment, and negotiation skills).
 
In addition, in Chapter 7, the results of the in-depth interview surveys with graduates clarified that the content of university classes and knowledge and ideas obtained in seminars were perceived as very “useful” for work.
 
Socially accepted ideas and the results of rough surveys are likely to result in the government and society’s continued neglect of humanities and social sciences education and their continued failure to note how this kind of university education is “useful” and significant for work. There is no way to resist this folly apart from the careful gathering and presentation of facts.
 

(Written by HONDA Yuki, Professor, Graduate School of Education / 2019)