Hard and Soft Skills Self-Assessment Relationship with Satisfaction of Graduates

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a survey of 299 bachelor's degree graduates of Business Administration and Management programs of Mongolian University of Science and Technology conducted in May 2023. In the survey, graduates were asked to assess the knowledge and skills they have obtained during their bachelor's degree studies, university facilities, extracurricular activities, and subsequent career growth. The knowledge and skills acquired by the graduates were grouped into 2 groups by factor analysis: soft and hard skills. University facility indicators are also grouped into 2 factors: the first one includes physical facilities and student services, and the second is teaching and organization. Graduates’ self-assessment of soft skills is higher than that of hard skills, but it was found that hard skills have a greater influence on satisfaction ratings. Hard skills were found to be more related to teaching and management. The amount of the salary at the time of the survey and the graduation date, are found to have no statistically insignificant relationship with graduates’ satisfaction level.