BUILDING SOFT SKILLS OF STUDENTS AT A TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

Taking into account a rapidly changing environment and the development priorities of TPU building over-professional competencies of students can be viewed as an essential tool for their successful integration into the global job market.

Scientists from a variety of fields claim that the 21st century is a century of knowledge- based economy and drastic changes. All these changes inevitably result in the emergency of a variety of new jobs. The Atlas of Emerging Jobs compiled by Skolkovo is a vision of changes that may happen in the job market in the coming decades. The emergency of new jobs requires the building of new competencies. Soft skills are highly essential due to the fact that their development can increase the work performance significantly.

The present paper introduces the concept of soft skills for the context of higher education. Soft skills are defined as an entirety of over-professional competencies and personal attributes that provide an opportunity to achieve the set goals through effective collaboration with others in the rapidly changing environment.

The paper proves the increasing importance of soft skills development in the context of knowledge-based economy. The paper discusses the experience of National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) School of Engineering Entrepreneurship in implementing an educational program aimed at soft skills development of students from various training programs. The educational program consists of three different modules:
1. Entrepreneurship education.
2. Extracurricular activity related to implementation of social and business projects.
3. Development of entrepreneurial environment at university.

The authors state that the presented educational program supports soft-skills development of engineering students that are universal and highly demanded on the present job market as well as hard skills.