Disciplinary Action

A widespread notion persists that university graduates in the social sciences and humanities face bleak employment prospects. This belief does contain a grain of truth: in a 2018 report, the Conference Board of Canada found that liberal arts graduates, more than graduates from any other discipline, encounter challenges when entering the workforce. In the early years after convocation, they may find themselves in roles that don’t make good use of their skills or qualifications. But over the long term — typically within a decade — these same graduates tend to thrive in a range of rewarding careers, including in education, law, finance, management, and arts and culture. The Conference Board report recommended that social sciences and humanities departments improve their efforts to prepare liberal arts students for employment, to ease the transition to the labour market.

In For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, the...