Investigating Soft Skills Development at a Higher Education Institution in South Africa

Abstract

There seems to be a gap between what industry expect from employees on the one hand, and the soft skills of recent graduates from Higher Education Institutions on the other. The aim of this paper was to investigate if the perceptions of IT-students regarding their own soft skills have changed over a period of 3 years. To do this a questionnaire was distributed in 2019 to the same students who completed this questionnaire in 2016, and the results were analysed. The results of this study showed that although soft skills should increase from student's first year of study to their final year, this is not how the students perceive the development of their own soft skills. The biggest improvements were in the students' perceptions of their skills in cross-cultural relationships, work ethic, decision-making and critical thinking. The skills for client management, time management, professionalism and leadership were perceived as lower. The results confirmed that the IT-students' own perceptions are not a reliable way of measuring their soft skills. Factor analysis was used to reduce the number of factors for further study, and according to this results the important soft skills were: Communication; Conflict management; Critical thinking; Interpersonal relations and teamwork; Leadership and Emotional intelligence; Multidisciplinary thinking; Professionalism and work ethic; and Self-management. These can now be used in further research on soft skills.