Soft Skills and Academic Achievement among STEM Students

Abstract

Soft skills are non-academic skills such as communication, critical thinking and problem-solving, teamwork, lifelong learning and information management, entrepreneurship, leadership and proactivity, as well as ethics and integrity. This study was conducted to identify the relationship between soft skills and academic achievement among science students. This study consists of three main variables which are gender, soft skills and academic achievement. This study follows the quantitative research approach, and a questionnaire was used as the instrument to collect the data. 512 respondents were involved in this research. Components of soft skills involved in this study are communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, teamwork skills, creativity skills and emotional well-being. Data analysis shows that science stream students in public universities generally possess high levels of soft skills (M = 3.71, S.D. = 0.554). The Structural Equation Model for path coefficient β, t-statistic and p-value indicate a significant relationship between soft skills and students’ academic achievement (β = 0.225, t = 4.141, p<0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that when the mastery of soft skills such as communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, teamwork skills, creativity skills and emotional well-being increases, students’ academic achievements also improve.