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At a recent academic conference, I noticed a familiar unease ripple through conversations about soft skills. Many participants winced at the term. They recognized the inadequacy of the term, yet struggled to agree on a better alternative. People floated around suggestions like human skills, essential skills, or power skills, but none seemed to stick. This persistent terminology problem reflects a deeper tension in our educational system. Theres a long-standing bias that elevates hard technical competencies over the nuanced, deeply human capabilities that actually define long-term professional success. Historically, hard skills emerged from the natural sciencesquantitative, measurable, and increasingly automatable. Soft skills, on the other hand, draw from the liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences. These disciplines help us understand human behavior, expression, and interaction. These qualities are notoriously difficult to quantify and even harder to teach. In business analytics, the field I teach, technical fluency is the price of entry. But what propels careers isnt just knowing which model to run. Its being able to explain it to a client, manage a team under pressure, adapt when the data shifts, and negotiate conflicting priorities. The multiplier is the human element. If we want studentsand professionalsto thrive in the age of artificial intelligence, we need to stop treating soft skills like fluff. Theyre complex, teachable, and foundational to success. And they need a better framework. Reframing the spectrum of soft skills The term soft skills has served as a catchall for too long. It flattens a vast range of human capabilities into a vague, undervalued category. Lets unpack what it typically refers to: Character traits: These are innate or deeply ingrained qualitiescuriosity, empathy, resilience, integrity. They are difficult to measure and even harder to teach, but they can be reinforced through self-awareness and mentorship. Behavioral habits: This includes punctuality, follow-through, and active listening. These are habits that form the scaffolding of daily effectiveness. Unlike traits, habits are trainable through repetition, reflection, and reinforcement. Teachable skills: Think negotiation, critical thinking, presentation, and conflict resolution. These are skills that we can structure, improve, and break down. Contextual competencies Some soft skills shift with the situation, like cross-cultural communication, executive presence, or stakeholder management. Mastering these skills requires knowledge, as well as adaptability and emotional intelligence. This structure isnt just an academic exercise. It provides a road map for how higher education can teach, assess, and elevate these skills with the rigor they deserve. Why the liberal arts are more relevant than ever This entire frameworktraits, habits, teachable skills, and contextual competenciesrests on a liberal arts foundation. Yet many continue to undervalue liberal arts education in the race to produce technically skilled graduates. Thats a mistake. The liberal arts cultivate intellectual agility, ethical reasoning, and cultural literacy. Rhetoric and composition shape communication. Philosophy and history sharpen critical thinking. Literature and anthropology nurture empathy and emotional intelligence. Ethics and moral philosophy develop character. These are not extrasthey are essential human capabilities, which humans have forged across centuries of thought and reflection. Even in the case of STEM education depends on these soft capacities for its practitioners to thrive in real-world scenarios. The traditional liberal arts saw this clearly. To build capable and thoughtful citizens, you need people who understand science and the humanities. The two disciplines complement one another. The technology paradox Enter artificial intelligence. As AI grows capable of executing routine cognitive tasks and even mimicking creative ones, the gap between human and machine narrows in some areasbut not in others. AI can analyze data, but it cant coach a team through a moral crisis. It can summarize a policy, but it cant build consensus across ideologically opposed stakeholders. It can write a headline, but it cant lead a classroom, negotiate a truce, or inspire trust. The more technical our world becomes, the more vital our human capabilities become. The paradox of progress is that it puts a premium on precisely those soft skills many continue to dismiss. Reclaiming the term Perhaps the answer isnt to replace the term soft skills, but reclaim it. Lets reframe soft not as easy or secondary, but as sophisticated, subtle, and distinctively human. These are the skills that make teams functional, leaders inspiring, and organizations resilient. Theyre not antithetical to technical skill, theyre actually the multiplier. We do our students a disservice when we teach them how to code but not how to communicate, or how to calculate but not how to collaborate. We handicap their potential when we separate technical and human education into silos. And we shortchange society when we undervalue the disciplines that teach us how to be human together. The future doesnt belong to those who can merely execute technical tasks. It belongs to those who bring the full spectrum of human capability to our most complex challenges. So yes, soft skills may be the hardest to master. But theyre also the ones that matter most.
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Getting older can be a time when declining vision, hearing, and cognitive abilities may mean it’s no longer safe to drive. It may even lead to giving up your driver’s license. In theory, those who age out of driving should be perfect new customers for ride-sharing apps. And yet, Lyft says only 5.6% of its U.S. riders are older than 65. The company sensed a disconnect. The app wasn’t meeting older riders needs, and it needed a redesign. Lyft Silver, now available nationwide, is designed specifically for older users, with a font that’s 1.4 times bigger than the standard app, and a simple interface. [Image: Lyft] “Developing Lyft Silver was truly a labor of care and intention,” Audrey Liu, Lyft’s EVP of rider experience, tells Fast Company via email. “We started by listeningreally listeningto the experiences and needs of older adults. We spoke with riders, caregivers, and organizations that serve this community to understand the specific challenges they face with transportation. Things like navigating complex apps, feeling unsure about who their driver will be, or needing a little extra time and assistance.” The new design represents a collaboration among experts on aging, as well as partners like AltaMed, Urban League, Self Help for the Elderly, and others. The specialized app leans on Lyft’s findings about how its older customers actually use the service, like matching riders with more accessible vehicles that are easier to get in and out of since Lyft data showed older adults were twice as likely to cancel rides when they got matched with a pickup truck. And because Lyft found older adults are 57% more likely to not show up for their rides, the app has a “Get Help” button that connects riders to a live agent during work hours. Lyft Silver profiles also have trusted contacts, so ride details can be shared with family and caregivers. [Image: Lyft] “Personally, thinking about my own mom and aunt, and the desire I have for them to move through their day with ease and independence, was a huge motivator,” Liu says. “We focused on building features that directly address those paint points: things like a simpler app interface with larger buttons and clearer instructions, the option for drivers who have indicated a preference for assisting older riders, and a longer wait time to enter and exit the vehicle without feeling rushed. It was about creating a service that feels less transactional and more supportive, fostering a sense of comfort and trust.” It’s simple by design, and by basing the app on the needs and experiences of its actual users, Lyft Silver shows how tech companies can better adapt their services to an aging population.
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Chances are, if youre not an Italian grandma or a skilled home chef from Rome, youve probably messed up while trying to make cacio e pepe. At least, thats the thesis underpinning the scientific study Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce, published on April 29 in the journal Physics of Fluids. The studyconducted by a group of scientists from the University of Barcelona, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, the University of Padova in Italy, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austriais pretty much what its title suggests: a full-on scientific investigation into the most optimized recipe for the creamy, peppery pasta dish. Were Italians living abroad, and we often get together for dinner to enjoy traditional recipes from home, says Ivan Di Terlizzi, the studys lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute. Among the dishes weve cooked, cacio e pepe came up several times, and every time, we were struck by how hard it is to get the sauce right. Thats when we realized it might actually be an interesting physical system to study. And of course, there was also the very practical motivation of avoiding the heartbreak of wasting good pecorino! A very brief history of pasta-based physics experiments This isnt the first time that pasta has been used as inspiration for physicists. Probably the most famous example of “pasta as experiment,” Di Terlizzi says, is the observation that spaghetti almost never breaks cleanly in half, tending to snap into three or more fragments instead. This fact originally puzzled renowned physicist Richard Feynman (who died in 1988) and wasnt fully explained until 2005, when a team of French physicists showed that its caused by cascading cracks traveling along the pasta. Another example, Di Terlizzi adds, is the physics of ring-shaped polymers, which are notoriously hard to understand. A study in 2014 used a type of circular pasta, which the researchers called anelloni, to explain why these looped polymers behave so strangely in experiments. With cacio e pepe, the physics question of interest has to do with the sauces unusual behavior under heat. The main goal of our work wasnt just culinary; it was to explore the physics of this system, Di Terlizzi says. The sauces behavior under heat shares features with many physical and biological phenomena, like phase transitions or the formation of membrane-less organelles inside cells. The recipe is, in a sense, the practical byproduct of everything we learned. The most optimal cacio e pepe recipe, according to scientists Cacio e pepe traditionally only includes three ingredients: pasta, pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper. While it seems like a simple enough concoction, the sauces creamy smoothness (the backbone of the dish) can be quite finicky to achieve. When the temperature gets too high or the mixing of cheese and pasta water isnt done carefully, the cheese proteins will denatureessentially unfolding and losing their normal 3D structure. In the unfolded state, the proteins then stick together and the emulsion breaks. Instead of a creamy consistency, you get a gooey mess, which we call salsa impazzita . . . that is, crazy sauce, Di Terlizzi says. The physics-based solution to crazy sauce? Its all about starch. It turns out that, by perfecting the ratio of starch in the pasta water to cheese mass, the cacio e pepe sauce becomes far more resistant to heat, which stabilizes the emulsion and prevents clumping. [Chart: AIP Publishing] Without starch, the so-called mozzarella phase kicks in at around 65°C, where the proteins start forming large aggregates, Di Terlizzi says. But if the starch concentration is above 1% relative to the cheese mass, the clumps stay small, and temperature becomes much less critical, making it much easier to get a good result. This is similar to using polymers to stabilize emulsions in soft matter physics, he adds. Phase behavior of cacio e pepe sauce contains ultra-detailed steps to a foolproof cacio e pepe, but here are the instructions in condensed terms: Step 1: For a pasta dish for two hungry people, start with 300 grams of the preferred tonnarelli pastaor opt for spaghetti or rigatoni, if you must. From there, youll need 200 grams of cheese. Traditionalists would insist on using only pecorino Romano DOP [protected designation of origin], but some argue that up to 30% parmigiano Reggiano DOP is acceptable; though this remains a point of debate, the recipe notes. Proceed based on your own personally held cheese preferences. Step 2: To prepare the sauce, dissolve 5 grams of starchlike potato or corn starchin 50 grams of water. Heat this mixture gently until it thickens and turns from cloudy to nearly clear. This is your starch gel. Step 3: Add 100 grams of water to the starch gel. Instead of manually grating the cheese into the resulting liquid, blend the two together to achieve a homogeneous sauce. Finish the sauce by adding black pepper to taste (for best results, toast the pepper in a pan before adding). Step 4: To prepare the pasta, cook in slightly salted water until it is al dente. Save some of the pasta cooking water before draining. Once the pasta has been drained, let it cool down for up to a minute to prevent the excessive heat from destabilizing the sauce. Finally, mix the pasta with the sauce, ensuring even coating, and adjust the consistency by gradually adding reserved pasta water as needed. Step 5: Garnish with grated cheese and pepper, and serve.
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