The degree value of Arts, Humanities and Social Science (AHSS) and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for Elite Professional Service (EPS) firms
Keywords: Elite Professional Service Firms
Consulting and Investment Banking Firms
Higher Education
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Employability
Arts, Humanities and Social Science
Graduate Employment

In the United Kingdom (UK) and abroad, increasing students’ employability has been one important concern of higher education (HE) in the last decades. In this context, there is large student demand for ‘high value degrees’ that teach employability-related skills and have strong labour market outcomes. In the scholarly literature, comparing the value of Arts, Humanities and Social Science (AHSS) and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degrees have been the source of much interest and scrutiny. The literature to date, however, has focused primarily on investigating the financial returns (e.g., income) of AHSS and STEM degrees and has largely ignored their value and labour market utility for specific professions. Specifically, there is no research that has explored the value of AHSS and/or STEM degrees for securing employment at Elite Professional Service (EPS) firms, despite EPS firms being one of the most sought-after graduate careers for their high pay and elite status.
The thesis here addresses and adds to this evidence gap, by exploring student and graduate perceptions of the value of AHSS and STEM degrees for securing employment at EPS firms. The thesis focused on consulting and investment banking (IB) firms, as there is a conspicuous lack of research that specifically explore these two EPS firms. The purpose of this is research is not to argue whether an AHSS or STEM degree has greater value for EPS firms. Rather, it aimed to understand what skills students/graduates gained through their respective degrees (AHSS and STEM) to secure employment opportunities at EPS firms (Consulting and IB). To understand this, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with students and graduates from four Russell Group universities with internship and/or full-time opportunities at EPS firms.
The findings indicate that both AHSS and STEM degrees were perceived to help students develop specific employability-related skills that are of high value for EPS firms. These skills included the quantitative abilities of STEM graduates and the analytical abilities of AHSS graduates. At the same time, however, participants described the skills which they perceived were lacking from their studies, such as specific commercial and business knowledge. To supplement these skill gaps, students took the time outside of their degree programmes to improve their employability for EPS firms. This was perceived to be highly valued by EPS firms, in addition to the specific employability-related skills gained from their respective degrees.
An additional contribution of this research is the finding of ‘hybrid degrees’ which have course content from both AHSS and STEM subjects. In this research, hybrid degrees included a social data science-related degree, a sustainability and business-related degree and a technology and business-related degree. The students in these hybrid degrees revealed that they provided students with both the hard and soft skills gained through AHSS and STEM subjects, positioning employability at the forefront of their curriculum agenda. The skills and employability-related opportunities that were provided at hybrid degrees were perceived to be of high value for EPS firms. In addition, the research findings corroborated some underlying and well-established knowledge about graduate employment such as the overarching importance of institutional prestige and social capital to secure employment at EPS firms.