Importance of technical and soft skills: Electronics students’ and teachers’ perspectives

In light of the gap between the qualifications of engineering and technology programme graduates and those required in the industry, the importance assigned by students and teachers to the technical and soft skills required of two-year electronics programme graduates is examined. Forty-four electronics students and 13 electronics teachers from a two-year college in Israel took part in the study, in which quantitative and qualitative tools were utilised. It was found that both the students and their teachers assigned relatively high importance to technical and soft qualifications. However, the importance assigned by the students to these skills was significantly lower than that assigned by their teachers. It might be possible to explain the findings by the present curriculum not having sufficient emphasis on providing students with relevant technical and soft skills.