Abstract
Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) need diverse skills in the globalized food and drink sector: Food-specific or scientific / technical skills and generic or intuitive soft skills. This study determined how satisfied FS&T students were with overall improvement, and in key technical and soft skills, based on their university work; and if satisfaction was linked to geography, degree in progress, anticipated degree, anticipated work place or anticipated job responsibility. An on-line survey was completed by 267 students in over 20 countries using a 5-point Likert scale to evaluate satisfaction. Responses were analyzed by the Friedman or Kruskal Wallis tests for more than two groups, otherwise by the Wilcoxon Signed Rank or Mann-Whitney tests. There were no differences in Overall Satisfaction with technical and soft skills training. Among soft skills, training in Working with Others and Being Responsible were more often rated “Excellent” and students were more satisfied with their training than with Solving Problems, Communication and Positive Attitude. Students anticipating a job with high responsibility were more satisfied with overall soft skill training and with 3 of the 5 specific soft skills. Among technical skills, students were more satisfied with improvement in basic sciences (Microbiology, Chemistry, Processing, Safety), and those in Northern Europe were more satisfied with overall technical training. These data show variations in perception and/or efficacy of technical and soft skill training in Food Science programmes and underline the need for separate attention to the incorporation of soft skill training into the design of FS&T courses.
Highlights
Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) need many diverse skills to meet the needs of a globalized food and drink sector: Food-specific or scientific / technical skills and the more recently recognized generic or intuitive soft skills, which are broadly applicable across job titles and include interpersonal, communication and social skills
FS&Ts appear to be trending towards higher levels of education, with more students aiming for a Ph.D. than in previous years, but divided on the amount of desired job responsibility and having a strong interest in working for small and medium sized enterprises
Students were most satisfied with progress in Microbiology, Chemistry, Food Safety and Food Processing, highlighting the efficacy of food safety training in the FS&T curriculum
Summary
Food Scientists and Technologists (FS&T) need many diverse skills to meet the needs of a globalized food and drink sector: Food-specific or scientific / technical skills and the more recently recognized generic or intuitive soft skills, which are broadly applicable across job titles and include interpersonal, communication and social skills. Despite this desire, employers tended to believe their FS&T employees do not have sufficient soft skills, while the employees stated that they do: e.g., only 42% of FS&T employers found their employees sufficient in Group Leadership while 92% of employees rated themselves as sufficient (Mayor et al, 2015). The food and drink sector of the future will require employees with competencies in both technical and soft skills, and levels of student satisfaction can be instrumental in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of current food science curricula in meeting these requirements. The knowledge gained from student self-assessment can be used by food science educators to improve curricula and produce the food scientists and technologists needed for this rapidly changing sector
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