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Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Students Need Job Skills Both Hard and Soft

In the view of one university president, higher-education institutions need to incorporate more soft skills into formal instruction in order to better prepare well-rounded students for the work world after graduation.

“Critical thinking, complex problem solving, empathy, creativity, and communication skills are all necessary in today’s work environment,” Gloria Cordes Larson, president of Bentley University, said in an email exchange with Inside Higher Education. “This is why more and more schools are finding creative ways to integrate the arts and sciences with professional and technical skills. Employers are point-blank telling us they need college graduates who have mastered soft skills in addition to the hard, industry-specific technical skills.”

Larson said college classes should give students more practical experience—through internships, immersion classes with corporations, community service, or other means—and introduce them to technologies relevant in their chosen fields, but “it all begins with an approach that combines left-brain and right-brain thinking.”

She noted that Bentley and other universities offer programs designed to enable students to major in both business/technical fields and liberal-arts studies, which helps them develop analytical and communication skills.

Getting first-year students involved in campus career services right away, rather than waiting until their senior year when they’re starting to apply for jobs, is also important, she stressed.