Acquiring and Practicing Soft Skills: A Survey of Technical-technological Undergraduates at a Malaysian Tertiary Institution

When it comes to ‘hard’ data with reference to ‘soft’ skills in the Malaysian context, there is a dearth of empirically verifiable statistics from an academic standpoint. The common sense belief espoused by the mass media, industry spokespersons and political figures suggest a critical lack of soft skills for many local undergraduates. This has led to other problems, for instance, the inability of local graduates to secure gainful employment and to become important members of their workplace communities. We take up this challenge to study what soft skills really mean to the end-users – technical-technological undergraduates who were completing their tertiary diplomas and preparing to enter the labour market. In addition, we wanted to know what these students feel about their preparation level with reference to acquiring and practising soft skills. Quantitative data were collected using an exit survey that probed two critical soft skill areas as outlined by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education: critical thinking and problem solving skill, and also lifelong learning and information management skill. Working with a sample of final semester technical-technological students at a tertiary institution, results from this study revealed a mix of preconceptions regarding soft skills and different levels of preparedness to employ these skills in the labour market, although the participants seem to feel that soft skills are indeed indispensable for them.