Abstract:

The model of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the Bolonia Plan, brought a series of changes at the university institutions as acquire competences, among others, within the students throughout their academic studies. Since then, many changes were set up; for teachers, a new challenge for sharing knowledge (intranets, social nets, new technologies, among others); for students, a new scenario of learning (acquisition of transversal competences, face up the paradigm of new industrial market approaches and closer tutorial paths for supporting job hunting). Both the teaching improvements developed by the teaching staff to achieve more inclusive and accessible classes, as well as the new modes of learning that students have had to address, have served to achieve better rates of access to the labor market.

Bologna has also achieved significant improvements in terms of internationalization over two decades thanks to the incoming and outgoing Erasmus+ mobility grants.

Undoubtedly, Bolonia has been the foundation for academic and personal Students`s development. Nearly 30 transversal competences have been identified that are suggested to be relevant to achieve training in excellence (learning for practice, problem-solving, efficiency, creativity, analytic capacity, flexible, well-organized, team-work capacity, social, inclusive, multicultural, diversity, open mind, cooperative, autonomous learning, capacity of analysis and synthesis, abilities for personal relationships, initiative and innovation for new freelance business, critical opinion, capacity of management and planification, ethical behavior, social responsibility, oral and writing communication, linguistic abilities and ICT´s knowledge).

Furthermore, within the concept of transversal competences, it has been easy to identify the common concept of soft skills.

However, faced with this complex challenge, there is a doubt about how the labor market is noticing that young people have acquired these soft skills or if there are still deficiencies. Is it now the moment to take a step forward and tackle a new era in the EHEA model?

This paper aims to analyze, under a questionnaire developed for students of the Degree in Organizational Engineering (bilingual) at the University of Burgos, which soft skills are more valuable to the student in order to be better prepared to access the labor market. In view of the results it can be inferred what needs to be further reinforced by the teachers and institutions. We are facing the new 21st century skills. What else?

Keywords:

Transversal competences, education, Bolonia, EHEA, soft skills.