Liberal Arts and Sciences: Employability

The University of Birmingham has a longstanding excellent reputation for graduate recruitment. 

It has been named as the most targeted university by the UK’s top 100 graduate employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2021 an independent annual review of graduate vacancies and starting salaries at the UK’s 100 best-known and most successful employers.

In addition, a Twenty-First Century degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, offered by the University of Birmingham, will help you stand out in any competitive field.  In recent years, our graduates have achieved scholarships for postgraduate masters, and gone on to doctoral study, obtained competitive graduate internships, and successfully secured a range of jobs including:

• Engineering (Aerospace and Defence)
• BioTech start-up (Strategist)
• Teaching
• Marketing Specialist
• Software Engineering
• Civil Service
• Energy/Commodities Trading
• Charitable sector
• Sustainability/Logistics
• Police
• Publishing
• Portfolio Analysis (drug development)
• Policy role in local government
• Urban Policy
• Energy sector
• Financial Sector (Customer Service representative)
• Customer Success Manager

LANS’ core modules teach the soft skills that employers most look for in graduates.  According to the 2020 survey by the Institute of Student Employers, the skills and attributes employers look for most in graduates are: teamwork (91%), interpersonal skills (89%), listening (78%), problem-solving (77%), taking responsibility (73%), time management (73%), and self-awareness (72%).  These are the skills that most influence employers when recruiting graduates.  Our students practise these and other skills on the core modules and across the programme.  At present, three out of four of the core modules are team-based, requiring interpersonal skills and listening (also practised separately on Interdisciplinarity II); at least two core modules involve problem-solving; and reflection is both a summative assessment as well as being built across the programme.  Students learn to take responsibility and time management both in core modules and by taking greater responsibility for their degree because they have more choice of modules than most students.  Whilst you should make use of your university experience to practise these skills and attributes, doing so under the pressure of assessment provides an important opportunity to demonstrate your ability.

LANS students have the option of taking our very popular Entrepreneurial modules in their final year: Learning Entrepreneurial Skills (semester 1) in which groups work together to develop and pitch their business plan; and Entrepreneurial Start-Up (semester 2) in which groups work together from exploring the viability of their product through to launch. 

Progress is supported and guided by the University’s Careers Network team, and students benefit from the expertise and guidance of external partners, which have included: international technology companies (IBM, Google), local start-up accelerators (Entrepreneurial Spark, BizzInn), and investor firms (Midven, Blue Sky finance).

What’s most striking from the Institute of Student Employer’s 2020 survey is that employers are agnostic as to what degree students do.  For 93% of employers, your degree choice is less important than the skills you develop on it.

But unlike most university students, LANS students can present an important narrative about their degree.  Because they’ve built their modules by selecting modules from across campus (as opposed to choosing from a small choice of modules), they have a story to tell about their degree.  In addition, by taking different subjects, they will have been assessed in a variety of ways and learned to think from different disciplinary perspectives.  This brings fresh challenges, like understanding different ways of framing topics, different kinds of knowledge, and using qualitative and quantitative methodologies.  The structure of the LANS degree also encourages students to take calculated risks without impacting their degree classification.  This instils in our students a desire to challenge themselves intellectually, and students commonly begin studying a new discipline in their final year.

By practising multi- and interdisciplinarity over four years, our students are adept at thinking creatively and making connections across disciplines, viewing problems more holistically and in their complexity (as opposed, for example, to viewing them only as a political problem or as a biological problem etc.).  They also excel in their ability to communicate across disciplines.

Employers value skills over subject matter because they’re looking for graduates who demonstrate an ability to learn and adapt.  Graduates value skills because of the ability to adapt to a changing landscape in which new kinds of jobs are created, others are becoming obsolete, and its increasingly common that people will have multiple careers during their working life.  The design of the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences programme at the University of Birmingham allows students to take control of their degree and acquire the skills and attributes needed for lifelong learning, helping them stand out with a unique USP in a highly competitive and crowded workplace.

• Why employers love Liberal Arts graduates
• A career-aligned Major isn't enough
• How do universities prepare for jobs that don't yet exist?
• Why the liberal arts will rule the digital world
• What can you do with that (useless) liberal arts degree? A lot more than you think 
• What is the return on investment from a liberal arts degree?