Articles
It’s time to reconsider degree programs and view a student’s entire curriculum
over four years of undergraduate study to provide numerous opportunities to
begin to quantify and enhance a student’s soft skills. It is important to note, that
the more classes that are modified to provide students with the opportunity to
use their soft skills, the more likely they will have developed the requisite
collection. The old model of the professor holding forth from the front of the
lecture hall, while students take notes does little or nothing to inculcate soft skills
in our students.
Some programs have a class that professes to prepare students for the working
world, but the reality is that no one class or learning experience, be it speech,
communication, rhetoric or business etiquette will provide enough opportunity
to develop student soft skills. Instead, a regimen of ongoing assignments,
discussion, and exercises interwoven throughout a student’s class work, plus a
healthy assortment of extra curricular experiences such as internships,
community service work, involvement in clubs, fraternities and other socially-
based organizations, are required to foster the employer-requested soft skill set.
An important element of some of these experiences should be to push students
outside of their comfort zone and encourage them to embrace new challenges
as unique learning opportunities.
To that end, a number of the nation’s leading graduate business programs have
identified soft skill development as central to their graduate’s success. In a
recent Wall Street Journal article titled “Top Schools Struggle to Teach Soft
Skills,” by Ronald Alsop, M.B.A. programs such as Yale, Vanderbilt, University of
Chicago, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and others have incorporated
innovative element into their respective curricula to build and strengthen soft
skills.
Vanderbilt requires their students to create and perform a stand-up comedy
routine, while a Carnegie Mellon class includes readings from “Death of A
Salesman” and “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller. Students are asked to play the part
least like themselves, forcing them to get out of their own comfort zone. The
consensus among these top programs appears to be that active, engaged
learning is the best way to teach and develop interpersonal and other soft skills.
Other Necessary Skills
As suggested above, academic work can be shaped to provide the opportunity to
incorporate ‘soft skill’ development. However, according to a 2002 article in the
Career Opportunity News published by Purdue University’s Center for Career
Opportunities, employers also value a further set of core skills, which may be
difficult for educators to teach. From this writer’s perspective, it appears these
skills are learned at an age much earlier than college. These include:
1. Strong work ethic
2. Courtesy to co-workers and supervisors
3. Punctuality
4. Self-discipline and self-confidence
5. Conformity to prevailing norms regarding dress, speech, grooming, etc.
Summary
The multiple stakeholders including employers, academicians, campus career
advisors and most importantly, students, show various degrees of sensitivity to the
development of soft skills. Overcoming obstacles to their integration in curricula
is one of the major roadblocks we must overcome as educators. Doing so
requires consensus building across departments, and single-minded assessment
of ways large and small to offer students the chance to develop their soft skills.
The pay off is in practice ready graduates who bring a strong theoretical
understanding paired with a portfolio of soft skills that make them a coveted
catch in their profession.
over four years of undergraduate study to provide numerous opportunities to
begin to quantify and enhance a student’s soft skills. It is important to note, that
the more classes that are modified to provide students with the opportunity to
use their soft skills, the more likely they will have developed the requisite
collection. The old model of the professor holding forth from the front of the
lecture hall, while students take notes does little or nothing to inculcate soft skills
in our students.
Some programs have a class that professes to prepare students for the working
world, but the reality is that no one class or learning experience, be it speech,
communication, rhetoric or business etiquette will provide enough opportunity
to develop student soft skills. Instead, a regimen of ongoing assignments,
discussion, and exercises interwoven throughout a student’s class work, plus a
healthy assortment of extra curricular experiences such as internships,
community service work, involvement in clubs, fraternities and other socially-
based organizations, are required to foster the employer-requested soft skill set.
An important element of some of these experiences should be to push students
outside of their comfort zone and encourage them to embrace new challenges
as unique learning opportunities.
To that end, a number of the nation’s leading graduate business programs have
identified soft skill development as central to their graduate’s success. In a
recent Wall Street Journal article titled “Top Schools Struggle to Teach Soft
Skills,” by Ronald Alsop, M.B.A. programs such as Yale, Vanderbilt, University of
Chicago, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and others have incorporated
innovative element into their respective curricula to build and strengthen soft
skills.
Vanderbilt requires their students to create and perform a stand-up comedy
routine, while a Carnegie Mellon class includes readings from “Death of A
Salesman” and “All My Sons” by Arthur Miller. Students are asked to play the part
least like themselves, forcing them to get out of their own comfort zone. The
consensus among these top programs appears to be that active, engaged
learning is the best way to teach and develop interpersonal and other soft skills.
Other Necessary Skills
As suggested above, academic work can be shaped to provide the opportunity to
incorporate ‘soft skill’ development. However, according to a 2002 article in the
Career Opportunity News published by Purdue University’s Center for Career
Opportunities, employers also value a further set of core skills, which may be
difficult for educators to teach. From this writer’s perspective, it appears these
skills are learned at an age much earlier than college. These include:
1. Strong work ethic
2. Courtesy to co-workers and supervisors
3. Punctuality
4. Self-discipline and self-confidence
5. Conformity to prevailing norms regarding dress, speech, grooming, etc.
Summary
The multiple stakeholders including employers, academicians, campus career
advisors and most importantly, students, show various degrees of sensitivity to the
development of soft skills. Overcoming obstacles to their integration in curricula
is one of the major roadblocks we must overcome as educators. Doing so
requires consensus building across departments, and single-minded assessment
of ways large and small to offer students the chance to develop their soft skills.
The pay off is in practice ready graduates who bring a strong theoretical
understanding paired with a portfolio of soft skills that make them a coveted
catch in their profession.
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Soft Skills Cont.