Meaning of soft-skills in the context of humanistic, civic and utilitarial objectives of higher education

The meaning of soft skills for the three objectives of higher education - humanistic, civic and utilitarian - is discussed in terms of historical and philosophical analysis. It is found that soft skills facilitate mutual strengthening of the objectives and help the competence approach in overcoming the tensions between them. It is demonstrated that the issue of ambivalence of these values is updated due to soft skills. It is proved that particularly soft skills become a new challenger for the integrator role providing integrality and balance of the intellectual, integral and existential development of the student and make it possible to transfer the specifics of the classical higher education (humanism, civics and universality) to the profile (specialized) higher schools on the one hand,and prevent universities from turning into “large colleges” (that massovization and professionalization may involve), on the other hand.