Gabriella Horváth-Csikós

As the possession of soft skills is becoming an essential part of the basic skill set of entrants, it is undoubtedly essential to research and develop these skills. The purpose of this study was to examine how students studying at the largest agricultural university in Hungary perceive their soft skills to be in line with employers’ expectations, i.e. whether demand matches supply, in what qualities students feel strong, what employers expect, how well supply and demand in the agricultural labor market match in terms of soft skills. Furthermore, whether educational institutions are able to develop these qualities in students and what other possibilities there might be to strengthen these qualities. The research results confirmed that the university students in the sample perceive the quality of their soft skills to be influenced by several factors, including age, gender and work experience. They show that women over 40 with work experience tend to have stronger emotional soft skills, while men of the same age who have not started their careers are stronger in leadership skills. The study also concluded that students do not feel that current schooling in institutions can strengthen the soft skills expected by the labor market (the average on a five-point Likert scale was 2.74), while the development of these soft skills was considered by respondents to be as important as the development of hard skills (agreement was very high with an average of 4.52 on a five-point Likert scale).

This paper explores the concept of place attachment, encompassing its meaning and representation among university students. It provides a comprehensive picture of place identity and place attachment among university students. The planned approach was to conduct a survey among students to examine their attachment to place from a green perspective. A questionnaire was used, and the data were analyzed using SPSS version 28 and Smart PLS 4. This paper summarizes the results of a survey of 245 students studying at the Budapest University of Economics and Business in 2022/23. The students were graduates in International Studies and Commerce-Marketing. The setting of the study was the university environment because it is an institution of higher education, a bastion of knowledge transfer, and the issue of attachment is very important in the relationship between educational institutions and students. The results confirmed that students perceived green energy (β: 0.283, t: 4.637 p: 0.000) and green solutions (β: 0.430, t: 9.155 p: 0.000) as having a significant effect on whether or not they perceived the institution as student-friendly. It is no coincidence, therefore, that students are satisfied with the green environment of the university (74%). They believe that the university has an adequate amount of green space (68%). However, the current situation could be improved, with a large proportion of students missing the widespread use of green (79%) and renewable energy (70%) in the institution.