Extracurricular Activities as an Important Tool in Developing Soft Skills

摘要

The paper examines the potential of extracurricular activities as an important tool for developing soft skills and assesses its significance to engineering university students. Based on empirical research the research evaluates how extracurricular activities contribute to the development of soft skills. In the 21st century higher engineering education faces big challenges to prepare competent graduates in order that they are competitive in the global market, rapid technological advancements affect all aspects of people's life, globalization results in competition growing, increase of migration, climate change and culture of sustainability. Educational policies are made to improve the quality of education, where the main priority is to develop hard skills rather than soft skills. The main purpose of education system is to foster soft skills throughout all layers of education including not only academic activities but also non-academic attributes should be taken into consideration. And in this term extracurricular activities play an important role in socialization and offer a powerful resource for personal development and acquisition of various soft skills that may not always be developed during classroom activities.