Basic Content of Soft Skills in Higher Engineering Education

The article presents a review of contemporary English-language academic literature on the historical development of the concept of soft skills – supplementary to professional competencies that significantly enhance the effectiveness of professional activities. Among the objective reasons for the growing academic interest in soft skills are the imbalance between the development of technical and humanitarian knowledge, the rigid specialization of knowledge, and others. The author highlights the terminological ambiguity surrounding soft skills, including a multitude of synonymous terms and the difficulty of developing a clear classification system. The article analyzes methodological, psychological, and cultural causes of this ambiguity. As an alternative approach to the unification of soft skills, the author proposes the creation of a database containing various definitions of their specific features and areas of application. The study applies historical, systemic, and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as a method of parametric-compositional equivalence to determine the core semantic essence of soft skills in the context of higher engineering education – namely, personal development. It is concluded that the foundational basis for soft skills in engineering education includes such competencies as self-regulation, self-education, self-discipline, self-control, self-direction, self-awareness, self-motivation, self-management, and self-actualization.