Bridging the Soft Skills Gap in Moroccan Higher Education: Insights for Policy, Curriculum, and Workforce Preparation

This quantitative descriptive study amounts to a needs analysis, the first component of a multi-phase mixed methods research endeavour aimed at exploring the rampant soft skills gap between academia and business in Morocco. Employing a convenience sampling methodology, a survey was administered to 170 undergraduate university students and analysed using SPSS descriptive statistics, revealing a significant deficiency in key soft skills within the participants’ skillsets. Nevertheless, these respondents manifested a robust willingness to address this skills gap, notably favouring the adoption of a Blended Learning Model for soft skills development. The meticulous analysis of the survey data stresses the imperative need to seamlessly integrate soft skills development initiatives into the existing curricular framework. Such integration holds the promise of catalysing substantial development in the personal, academic, and professional orbits of the study participants. Thus, the results of this study underscore the critical significance of addressing the soft skills gap (mismatch) for Moroccan policymakers, curriculum designers, educators, and researchers, and emphasize the inevitability of equipping university graduates with the essential soft skills required to thrive in the contemporary workplace.