Debunking College Myths: College Builds Soft Skills

Here’s another longstanding myth about the value of universities–students acquire soft skills there.

No, they don’t.

Most arguments for this fall into one of two camps:

confusing social skills with soft skills

When I say students don’t learn soft skills at college, people will oftentimes respond, “College absolutely teaches you to socialize, meet people, make friends…”

That’s great . . . but that’s NOT what soft skills are.

Soft skills (more usefully referred to as “professional skills”) are things like:

• Business communication

• Collaboration and teamwork

• Problem solving

• Time management

• Professional etiquette

• Initiative

Socializing with classmates may be important, but it isn’t remotely the same thing as soft/professional skills.

you say “tomato,” employers say “they don’t have soft skills”

Then there are those people who flatly declare, yes, students learn communication, collaboration, problem solving, etc. at college . . . weellllll . . . most employer surveys say something else entirely.

Year after year, survey after survey, employers list the same top complaint:

college grads are missing soft skills

Not missing Python. Not missing Excel. They’re missing communication, grit, problem solving, time management, and more. All the stuff students supposedly get by going to college. (Although, to be clear, they are ALSO missing Python and Excel, those just aren’t the TOP employer complaints about new grads.)

So, tell me this, hotshot. If college really delivered on soft skills, these wouldn’t be the top employer complaints year after year, would they?

No.

But they are. So what’s happening?

at the barrel of a gun, not in a lab

Soft skills don’t come from lectures or group projects where everyone gets the same grade. They don’t come from one-off workshops or simulation assignments.

soft skills come from doing real work with real people . . . repeatedly

You don’t learn how to “manage up” by reading about it. You learn it by managing someone who’s actually above you, with real expectations and a real job to do.

You don’t build resilience from a midterm. You build it from a brutal product sprint or a stakeholder meeting that goes sideways. Then fixing it. Then doing it again the next week.

One class doesn’t cut it. A lecture won’t do it. And social life in the dorms has zero overlap with writing a tight, tactful Slack to your engineering counterpart who’s behind on a deliverable.

College doesn’t provide soft skills because it can’t. The pedagogy is wrong. The teachers aren’t professionals. The stakes are academic.