{"title":"The human skills employers want as AI spreads, and where teenagers practice them","slug":"human-skills-ai-boarding-school","type":"post","excerpt":"Employers surveyed in 2024 ranked analytical thinking, resilience and leadership as top skills. Teenagers learn the human ones by practicing with other people, and boarding school is one place they get a lot of practice.","content":"Employers surveyed for the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranked analytical thinking as the top core skill, followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, and then leadership and social influence. Most of the top ten are human skills, learned by practicing them with other people. Boarding school is one place teenagers get a lot of that practice, every day. It isn't the only place, and practice isn't a guarantee.\r\n\r\n## What employers say they want\r\n\r\nThe World Economic Forum published the report in January 2025. It draws on a survey, run from May to September 2024, of more than 1,000 employers representing over 14 million workers in 55 economies. These are the ten skills employers most often named as core skills for their workforce:\r\n\r\n| Rank | Core skill in 2025 | Share of employers |\r\n| --- | --- | --- |\r\n| 1 | Analytical thinking | 69% |\r\n| 2 | Resilience, flexibility and agility | 67% |\r\n| 3 | Leadership and social influence | 61% |\r\n| 4 | Creative thinking | 57% |\r\n| 5 | Motivation and self-awareness | 52% |\r\n| 6 | Technological literacy | 51% |\r\n| 7 | Empathy and active listening | 50% |\r\n| 8 | Curiosity and lifelong learning | 50% |\r\n| 9 | Talent management | 47% |\r\n| 10 | Service orientation and customer service | 47% |\r\n\r\nOnly one of the ten is a technology skill. For 2030, employers expect technology skills, led by AI and big data, to grow in importance fastest, with creative thinking, resilience, and curiosity and lifelong learning close behind. On average, employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, down from 44% in the 2023 edition.\r\n\r\nA smaller U.S. survey points the same way. In the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Job Outlook 2025 survey of 237 employers, nearly 90% said they look for evidence of problem-solving on a college student's resume, and nearly 80% for teamwork.\r\n\r\nBoth are surveys of what employers say, weighted toward larger companies. They are not a forecast of your child's career.\r\n\r\n## What AI does well, and what it doesn't yet\r\n\r\nFor the report, the job site Indeed asked GPT-4o to rate its own ability to perform more than 2,800 work skills. None came out as having \"very high capacity\" to replace a person. Skills rooted in human interaction, such as empathy and active listening, showed no substitution potential. The model rated itself stronger at reading, writing, mathematics and translation. The report sees generative AI's main effect as \"augmenting\" human skills rather than replacing them.\r\n\r\nA tech parent will spot the caveats. It was the model grading itself, in August 2024, and more than a quarter of the skills showed moderate substitution capacity that the report says could grow. So the careful reading isn't \"these skills are safe forever.\" It is that working well with people, and adapting when things change, look likely to stay valuable whatever the tools do.\r\n\r\n## Where I stand\r\n\r\nI spent 26 years in technology and product management at Wells Fargo, then two years consulting with startup founders. I went to boarding school at 15, and I now work in boarding school enrollment, so weigh what follows knowing I think boarding deserves a look.\r\n\r\n## Where these skills are practiced\r\n\r\nNobody learns resilience from a worksheet. Teenagers build it by having a bad week and coming back from it. Leadership comes from being responsible for other people and sometimes getting it wrong. Empathy comes from living and working alongside people who aren't like you.\r\n\r\nBoarding school doesn't teach these in a class. It gives teenagers more hours of ordinary situations where they come up:\r\n\r\n| Skill on the list | Where it comes up at boarding school | Where else teenagers practice it |\r\n| --- | --- | --- |\r\n| Resilience, flexibility and agility | A bad grade or a homesick week, worked through without a parent fixing it the same day | A tough sports season, a first job |\r\n| Leadership and social influence | Dorm roles for older students at many schools, team captains, clubs | Student government, scouting, youth groups |\r\n| Empathy and active listening | Sharing a room and a hallway with students from other towns and countries | Family responsibilities, volunteering |\r\n| Motivation and self-awareness | Evening study hours and a schedule they mostly run themselves | A part-time job, a long personal project |\r\n| Curiosity and lifelong learning | Teachers who also coach and live on campus, and conversations that run past class | A good day school, a mentor, a serious hobby |\r\n\r\nAnalytical thinking, the top skill, is the one where boarding has no special claim. Any good school teaches it.\r\n\r\nWhat boarding does add is time with adults, the [dorm parents](/post/what-a-dorm-parent-does), coaches and teachers who see a student outside class. In a survey commissioned by The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) and reported in 2005, boarders reported about nine hours a week with teachers, coaches and staff outside class, against about four for private day and public school students. 78% of boarding graduates said they were very well prepared for the non-academic side of college, such as independence, social life and time management, against 36% of private day and 23% of public school graduates. Those figures are self-reported, industry-funded and more than 20 years old.\r\n\r\nIndependent studies with controls, such as a 2014 study of 5,276 Australian students, find mostly similar outcomes for boarders and day students, with some modest advantages for boarders. None of these studies measures the skills on the employers' list directly.\r\n\r\n## Practice isn't a guarantee\r\n\r\nA teenager can live in a dorm for four years and avoid every hard conversation. Another can build the same skills at home, through a demanding day school, a job, a team or real responsibility in the family, such as looking after younger siblings. Boarding offers more repetitions in a setting built for them, with adults nearby when things go wrong: [runway](/post/boarding-school-runway), while mistakes are still small. It doesn't do the work for anyone.\r\n\r\nIt isn't right for every teenager, either. It costs a lot, and a teenager who doesn't want to go is unlikely to thrive. If you're weighing it, start with [whether your teenager, and you, are ready](/post/are-you-ready-for-boarding-school). And the human skills on the list sit alongside technology skills, not instead of them. Your teenager will need both.\r\n\r\n## Sources\r\n\r\n- [World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025, January 2025 (PDF): Figure 3.3, Figure 3.4, Box 3.1 and Appendix](https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_Report_2025.pdf)\r\n- [NACE, \"What Are Employers Looking for When Reviewing College Students' Resumes?\", Kevin Gray, 9 December 2024](https://naceweb.org/talent-acquisition/candidate-selection/what-employers-seek-on-a-resume)\r\n- [Woodberry Forest School, report of the TABS / Art & Science Group survey of boarding, private day and public school graduates, 11 July 2005](https://www.woodberry.org/news-detail?pk=179757)\r\n- [Martin, Papworth, Ginns and Liem, American Educational Research Journal 51(5), 2014](https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214532164)\r\n\r\n## Frequently asked questions\r\n\r\n### What skills do employers value most, according to the World Economic Forum?\r\n\r\nIn the Future of Jobs Report 2025, employers most often named analytical thinking (69%), resilience, flexibility and agility (67%), and leadership and social influence (61%) as core skills. Creative thinking and motivation and self-awareness came fourth and fifth.\r\n\r\n### Can AI replace skills like empathy and leadership?\r\n\r\nIn an analysis for the same report, GPT-4o rated none of more than 2,800 work skills as having very high capacity to replace a person, and empathy and active listening showed no substitution potential. It was the model's own assessment in August 2024, so treat it as a snapshot rather than a promise.\r\n\r\n### Does boarding school teach leadership and resilience?\r\n\r\nIt gives teenagers a lot of practice: living with others, running their own schedule, holding roles in the dorm or on a team, and recovering from setbacks with adults nearby. No study has measured these skills in boarders against day students directly, and practice only helps a teenager who engages with it.\r\n\r\n### Can my teenager build these skills without boarding school?\r\n\r\nYes. A good day school, a part-time job, a sports team and real responsibility at home all build them. Boarding adds more hours of practice in one place, not a different kind of skill.\r\n\r\n## Related\r\n\r\n- [Extending Their Runway: boarding school as an early investment in a teenager](/post/boarding-school-runway)\r\n- [What does a dorm parent actually do?](/post/what-a-dorm-parent-does)\r\n- [Are you ready? A boarding school question for teenagers and their parents](/post/are-you-ready-for-boarding-school)\r\n\r\n*Last reviewed October 22, 2026.*\r\n","publishedAt":"2026-10-24T08:00:00.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-10-24T14:00:49.148Z","author":{"name":"Michael Janzen"},"categories":[{"name":"Guides","slug":"guides"}],"tags":[],"featuredImageUrl":null,"aeo":{"summary":"In the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 (January 2025; survey of over 1,000 employers, May to September 2024), the top core skills were analytical thinking (69%), resilience, flexibility and agility (67%) and leadership and social influence (61%). Most of the top ten are human skills learned through practice with other people. Boarding school offers a lot of that practice and more time with adults; good day schools, jobs, sports and family responsibility offer it too, and practice is not a guarantee.","questions":[{"q":"What skills do employers value most, according to the World Economic Forum?","a":"In the Future of Jobs Report 2025, employers most often named analytical thinking (69%), resilience, flexibility and agility (67%), and leadership and social influence (61%) as core skills. Creative thinking and motivation and self-awareness came fourth and fifth."},{"q":"Can AI replace skills like empathy and leadership?","a":"In an analysis for the same report, GPT-4o rated none of more than 2,800 work skills as having very high capacity to replace a person, and empathy and active listening showed no substitution potential. It was the model's own assessment in August 2024, so treat it as a snapshot rather than a promise."},{"q":"Does boarding school teach leadership and resilience?","a":"It gives teenagers a lot of practice: living with others, running their own schedule, holding roles in the dorm or on a team, and recovering from setbacks with adults nearby. No study has measured these skills in boarders against day students directly, and practice only helps a teenager who engages with it."},{"q":"Can my teenager build these skills without boarding school?","a":"Yes. A good day school, a part-time job, a sports team and real responsibility at home all build them. Boarding adds more hours of practice in one place, not a different kind of skill."}],"entities":[{"type":"Person","name":"Michael Janzen"},{"type":"Organization","name":"World Economic Forum","sameAs":"https://www.weforum.org"},{"type":"Organization","name":"National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)","sameAs":"https://www.naceweb.org"},{"type":"Organization","name":"The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS)","sameAs":"https://www.boardingschools.com"}],"keywords":["skills ai can't replace","future of jobs report 2025 skills","human skills for teenagers","soft skills employers want","boarding school leadership and resilience","skills kids need for the future"],"hideQaFromReaders":true},"site":{"name":"Boarding School Rocks","url":"https://boardingschoolrocks.com"},"_links":{"canonical":"https://boardingschoolrocks.com/post/human-skills-ai-boarding-school","markdown":"https://boardingschoolrocks.com/post/human-skills-ai-boarding-school/llm.txt","json":"https://boardingschoolrocks.com/post/human-skills-ai-boarding-school/data.json"}}