The Skills Agenda Administration

Supporting human skill development in and beyond the classroom

AI heightens the need for the unique abilities of human beings.

Loleen Berdahl

March 10, 2026

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The Skills Agenda

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Higher education — particularly but not exclusively the social sciences, humanities and fine arts disciplines — have long valued and developed human skills. Often referred to as “soft skills” these interpersonal skills are finally enjoying the respect they are due. For example, in its December 2025 white paper, New Economy Skills: Unlocking the Human Advantage, the World Economic Forum (WEF) identified human skills as essential to drive future economic growth. In the words of WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi, “Investing in human skills is not just preparation for the future of work, it is the foundation for the future of growth.”

In today’s column, I share ideas for how programs and individual faculty can support human skill development among students, regardless of their field of study.

What human skills are needed in the current and future economy?

In 2022, the Conference Board of Canada (now renamed Signal49Research) identified human skill gaps as a challenge for Canada’s economy: “The six most highly valued skill vacancies are active listening, critical thinking, reading comprehension, speaking, monitoring and coordination. Vacancies related to each of these skills currently cost the Canadian economy $1 billion or more annually in unrealized value owing to unfilled job vacancies.”

In our 2024 book, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, Jonathan Malloy, Lisa Young and I name a set of human skills that are critical to Canada’s economy. These include the ability to: work in diverse teams and across cultures; communicate effectively in multiple formats; make connections between ideas, contexts and people; motivate and lead; and act ethically and empathetically.

And in its 2005 white paper, the WEF discusses the economic importance of “uniquely human abilities — such as collaboration, critical thinking and emotional intelligence — that enable effective interaction, problem solving and decision making” and “the capabilities that allow individuals, organizations and societies to adapt to change and lead transformation.”

These human skills are often described as “future-proof” because they are not readily replaceable by AI. As Professor Kirk Chang and Senior Lecturer Susan Akinwalere (both of the University of East London) write, “As automation takes over routine and rules-based work, human skills become more important. Critical thinking, judgement, empathy, communication and complex problem-solving remain difficult to replicate with algorithms. The more advanced the technology becomes, the more valuable distinctly human strengths appear to be.”

How can we support human skill development in our programs and classrooms?

In its human skills framework, George Brown College asserts, “No one area of the college ‘owns’ skills — but instead the whole college eco-system ought to be one that builds the strengths and skills of students to support their personal and career success.” With this all-hands-on-deck approach in mind, here are some ideas for supporting students in developing human skills in our programs and individual courses.

Required liberal arts electives: Most liberal arts disciplines naturally centre on human behaviour and societies. As Jonathan Malloy, Lisa Young and I write: “Human literacy is strengthened through education that advances understanding of how and why humans think and act the ways they do, be it individually, in groups, or in societies. This includes knowledge about cultures, group identities, histories, and values. It includes knowledge about cognition and emotion, cognitive biases, and the power of storytelling and narrative. It includes knowledge about inequality, societal biases, and institutionalized privileges and disadvantages. These topics lie at the centre of arts education.”

Students majoring in the liberal arts can be expected to have numerous opportunities to build human skills over their programs. For students in other majors, a careful selection of program electives can create such opportunities.

Experiential learning: Work-integrated learning, internships, international exchanges and research-based learning provide students with direct opportunities to practice and develop human skills. Jean Daniel LaRock, of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, asserts, “These experiences require the same reasoning, communication, creativity and ethical judgement that the liberal arts were designed to produce, except now they are developed through doing rather than solely through reading and writing.”

In its 2025 budget, the federal government announced a three-year, $635.2 million commitment to expand work-integrated learning opportunities through 55,000 placements in the Student Work Placement Program. To encourage student engagement in such learning opportunities, academic programs can identify opportunities to provide students with academic credit for these experiences.

Teaching and assessment: At the classroom level, individual instructors can provide their students opportunities for human skill development through their teaching practices and assessments. This can include the explicit instruction and assessment of intercultural skills, teamwork skills, reading comprehension, listening skills and citizenship skills. It might also include opportunities to practice communication skills in different formats (posters, presentations, opinion columns, etc.).

Further, instructors can provide students the opportunity to develop understandings of values and ethics; the roles of history and context; and the potential for and impact of biases within their disciplinary context.

Human skills have always been valuable to the economy and to our larger society, and universities have always played an important role in their development. The current attention to these skills presents an opportunity for universities to support student development and demonstrate our continuing societal value.

Loleen Berdahl

Loleen Berdahl is a 3M National Teaching Fellow, an award-winning university instructor, the former executive director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (Universities of Saskatchewan and Regina), and professor and former head of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She is currently Acting Deputy Provost at the University of Saskatchewan. Since 2016, Dr. Berdahl has spoken about student skills training and professional development at conferences and university campuses across Canada. Her research on these topics was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant program. Her most recent book is For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities (with Jonathan Malloy and Lisa Young, University of Alberta Press 2024).

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This is one of three very important, interrelated posts I read this week. I encourage those concerned about the future of the liberal arts to read Alex Usher’s March 10th post entitled “Skills, Innovation, Quality, Blindness”. He exhorts Canadian governments to focus on developing the skills required for innovation to occur, not just the creation of material products and services. Finally, the Federation of Humanities and Social Science just revealed its 2026-2030 Strategic Plan, which includes “amplify(ing) impact through advocacy and public engagement” as its 1st strategic direction. They plan to communicate “the unique value of HSS disciplines to policymakers, institutional leaders, media, and citizens. Yours and Alex’s articles provide a valuable contribution to this timely endeavour.

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