STEM is essential for our nation's future. But it's not the only discipline that matters

David J. Skorton and Jane Chu | for USA TODAY NETWORK

What is the future of work? From business forums to think tanks to Congress, leaders are grappling with the question of how new technologies are reshaping employment in the 21st century — and how America’s institutions of higher education should respond.

Much of the focus, understandably, is on the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But the public discussion sometimes implies that, in the digital age, only the STEM disciplines are relevant. There is less emphasis on the intrinsic value of the arts and humanities, less understanding of how they, too, can help shape the future of work and, thus, less consideration of the benefits of integrating these disciplines.

Our own professional backgrounds are in medicine and the arts, respectively, so it might be natural to assume that our visions for higher education would diverge. However, both of us believe that the debate is too often framed as a false choice. We agree with Albert Einstein — who was not only a theoretical physicist but also an accomplished violinist — that the arts, sciences and humanities are all “branches from the same tree.” They are mutually reinforcing. For that reason, we favor broad educational experiences that integrate the STEM disciplines with the arts and humanities, drawing on and fortifying the connections between them.

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Last week, a new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study bolstered the case for education that integrates these fields, including medicine. In fact, the study committee extended the acronym to include medicine (STEMM). Conducted over the past two years, the study offers compelling evidence that integration has a positive impact on the learning outcomes of students, who carry the benefits far into their careers.

One of the report’s key findings is that integration can contribute to the development of critical thinking, communication and collaborative skills that are increasingly in demand. Last month, LinkedIn revealed a significant shortage of workers with these “soft skills” across 100 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

This helps explain why many business leaders — including those at technology companies — are now praising the virtues of integrated education. Similarly, the importance of empathy, ethics and teamwork in the practice of medicine has driven a growing number of medical schools, including Harvard and Yale, to begin integrating the arts and humanities into their curricula.

It might seem counterintuitive, but studying the arts and humanities can also aid students in developing the highly complex, technical understanding that STEMM disciplines often demand. That’s because assignments requiring students to use their creativity and imagination often help them internalize the material. In an undergraduate neuroscience class, for example, students who created a short film to represent the process of neurotransmission “significantly outperformed those who learned the concept from more conventional approaches,” according to a study described in the new report.

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Importantly, the benefits of integration flow in both directions. As the study explains, integration can provide artists with new tools and perspectives to bring to their work, influencing what they create. This is why the San Francisco Art Institute, for example, requires undergraduates to take a course in either math or science. And at the MIT Media Lab, graduate students are exploring how innovative technologies can enable new forms of storytelling.

Students who receive an integrated education will benefit in the long term. For one thing, the nature of work is constantly evolving, and there is no guarantee that specialized skills that are in demand today will be in demand in the future. At the same time, people’s career paths are becoming varied and unpredictable. Today, many people will have not only multiple jobs over the course of their working lives, but also multiple careers. As a result, it is increasingly necessary to be familiar with more than one discipline and, equally important, more than one way of understanding the world.

That, in the end, is the fundamental purpose of the sciences, arts and humanities: to help us understand ourselves and the world around us. And while it’s clear that STEMM education is essential, we can’t allow the next generation to become defined by their specialized skills at the expense of becoming well-rounded people.

For America’s institutions of higher education, the best response to the evolution of work is to ensure that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds have a broad, integrated education. That is the best way to prepare them — and the country — for the challenges of work, life and citizenship ahead.

David Skorton is secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and was chairman of the National Academies study committee. Jane Chu is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a sponsor of the National Academies study.