Arts and humanities are considered as two of the oldest fields of knowledge available to man. A similar study for the previous five-year period found no difference in employment growth between STEM and non-STEM. Why we still need to study the humanities in a STEM world (iStock) By . One such example is the boundary set between the disciplines of humanities and science. The difference between the two is often seen with ambiguity. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt, skepticism. The first thing to report is that the STEM/non-STEM differences Nelson-Laird et al. STEM is short for the field of studies involving science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A new approach, however, adds the study of arts to the formula for success and stretches the acronym to STEAM. The value of humanities … These fields of study don’t necessarily produce tangible goods and products, like STEM fields do. It is undeniably true that graduates in STEM fields generally earn higher salaries. For years, it’s been widely thought that the ticket to professional success was a STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) education. This is not an exhaustive STEM list and we have not included some large areas, not least biosciences. In 2015, the average difference between high-achieving boys and girls was 19 points, the equivalent of about half a year at school. One of the major differences between the two is that humanities involve a more critical and analytical approach whereas social sciences deal with more of a scientific approach. The humanities include fields like ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, philosophy, literature, and more. The truth is that the Arts and Humanities and STEM disciplines are complementary. The humanities are subversive. 2016 bachelor degrees averaged $64,900 in engineering, $61,300 in computer science, $55,100 in mathematics and other sciences, versus $46,100 in humanities and $34,900 in … reported for the 2005 NSSE data were reaffirmed in the 2008 data—a small negative difference (i.e., the STEM average was below the non-STEM average) on High-Order Learning, but larger negative differences for Integrative and Reflective Learning. Humanities and social sciences deal with human aspects like politics, law, linguistics, economics, and psychology. First, our final graphic (Figure 3), deriving from our analysis of a detailed database of academics, compares the main social science and humanities disciplines (in turquoise) with a few STEM disciplines (in orange) used for comparison only. Where there is a scientific breakthrough, there is a need for writers to break it down for the people who will be impacted by the discovery.