What students think about "soft skills" - survey results
In spring 2020 six partner Universities of the project from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands were gathering students’ opinion about the “soft skills”. We made a survey and asked to the students from different countries if they have heard about „soft skills”, do they think universities are paying sufficient attention to training of soft skills of the students and which are the most important skills that students would like to develop.
There were 340 participants – mostly bachelor and master level students – who have shared their opinion on this topic.
Most of the students – 70% - confirmed that they have heard about “soft skills”, but 54% of them pointed out that in their study programmes they do not have courses which tackle to develop soft skills. The same number of students thinks that Universities are not paying sufficient attention to the development of “soft skills” of their students.
Students were also evaluating importance of different “soft skills” and were pointing out skills which they would like to develop. 16% of the students would like to develop their communication and critical thinking skills, 13% of the students were interested to learn more about conflict diagnostics and resolution. 11% of the students were interested in effective time management topic and 10% - in leadership topic.
This survey clearly shows that students are aware about the importance of the “soft skills” in the professional career and they think that there are too less courses in their study programmes which help them to train and develop those skills. Universities nowadays should pay more attention to the study courses and teaching methods which help to develop those skills.
Visualisation of the data from the students' survey can be found HERE.
