Engineering soft skills: a comparative study between the GCC area demands and the ABET requirements

Abstract

EXCUTIVE SUMMARY Soft skills are increasingly demanded from engineers working in a globalized and highly interdependent world. The American Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), among other accrediting boards, has reflected the importance of soft skills by demanding graduating engineers to possess a set of soft skills as a condition for accrediting engineering programs from which they have graduated. This study aims to identify any discrepancies among the soft skills required by ABET and those demanded by the employing companies in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) area.