The job-finding juggernaut Indeed.com recently offered key distinctions between the all-important hard and soft skills necessary for workplace success. Career coach Jaime Birt clarified hard skills as the more technical aptitudes and behaviors, such as data mining, statistical analysis, and campaign management. Soft skills, on the other hand, include critical thinking, empathy, integrity, and problem-solving. In light of the value and urgency of the latter set, its descriptor might land as inaccurate and incomplete.
According to the Bethlehem-based National Association of Colleges and Employers’ (NACE) 2025 Job Outlook, employers most value problem-solving, teamwork, written communication, and initiative when reviewing candidates’ resumes. In a similar NACE survey, new college graduates and employers agreed on the importance of soft skills in the professional workplace. However, they disagreed about the new hires’ proficiency in these competencies. In terms of communication, for example, the employers rated their hirees as 25% less proficient than the recent grads graded themselves.
This data poses a challenge for colleges and the students graduating from them.
Now, more than ever, our nation needs strong women and men with integrity and empathy who can solve complex problems and think critically about their complex causes. While few, if any, universities host courses exclusively on these essentials, most schools have built their curricula to ensure students learn them. As the chair of the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges—Cedar Crest College, DeSales University, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, Moravian University, and Muhlenberg College, and president of DeSales, I am confident our six schools equip our students with the all-important skills, ill-named as soft.
Each of our core curricula offers a dynamic set of practical liberal arts classes that help our learners better understand their humanity, their responsibility for it, and the threats to its flourishing. Courses that teach about the power and importance of truth, beauty, and goodness are hardly softball requirements; rather, they challenge developing minds to understand how humane responses to harsh realities can soften their hardened consequences. From ethics to economics, and from literature to theology, classes in the humanities facilitate exploration and discovery, cultivate creativity, and inspire imagination through focused discussions, rigorous analysis, and intensive reading and writing. In an age of seemingly autocratic digital living tied more to screen time than time spent relating, such engagement is critical. And, college campuses are rich places where this occurs consistently.
At DeSales University, the recently adopted Connections Curriculum, our new general education course of study for all undergraduates, requires a number of reading- and writing-intensive classes, as well as philosophy, theology, and literature courses, to help students deepen their written communication and critical thinking skills. With more students choosing healthcare and business majors, which aligns with national trends, DeSales has a responsibility to equip our students with those skills that make them hirable in the hypercompetitive job market.
NACE’s study reported a significant change in employers’ hiring habits. The once-strong trend of recruiting college graduates with industry-specific majors might be coming to an end. Only 25% of employers now claim they hire majors that exclusively match the work of their company, illustrating a strong interest in skills that extend beyond the immediate focus of the hiring firm. Significantly, more than half agreed that they hire both industry-specific majors and those unrelated to the nature of the work with the new employer.
With prospective employers open to hiring graduates with diverse majors, young learners can open their minds, ease some anxiety, and appreciate the value of courses they may otherwise regard as soft. Additionally, they can spend time outside the classroom in activities and clubs where the skills cultivated in the humanities are applied in real relationships on teams that solve problems, build community, and address social ills.
The extracurricular activities of yesteryear, such as student government, community service, intramural athletics, and various campus clubs, now cluster into a professionalized field within higher education, commonly conceptualized across behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and social engagement. A 2020 Ohio State University study found that participation in these activities was associated with positive outcomes in academic performance, cognitive development, well-being, leadership, and multicultural awareness.
Moreover, Jason King Beirne, in his upcoming book The Soul of Catholic Higher Education, demonstrates the impact of Catholic higher education by examining differences between graduates of Catholic and secular colleges and universities. Key findings, among others, included results on ethics and community contributions. Catholic graduates are 22% more likely to say aspects of morality are “extremely relevant” in decision-making. They are 16% more likely to agree that their college experience shaped how they make moral and ethical decisions and 21% more likely to say their curriculum encouraged discussions on ethics. Catholic graduates are 20% more likely to have volunteered in the last six months and to have volunteered 50% more hours than secular graduates.
Challenges in higher education abound, and administrators, faculty, and students encounter and respond to them daily. No one response is sufficient, but the best responses are fueled by the soft skills that will serve far beyond our campuses and well into the boardrooms, C-suites, and front lines of American life.
Rev. James J. Greenfield, OSFS, Ed.D., is President of DeSales University and a recognized leader in higher education, organizational leadership, and human development. He writes on leadership, culture, workforce development, and the evolving role of universities in shaping the future of business and society.
