Üniversitepark Bülten | Bulletin | 2021 | 10(2): 116-138. www.unibulletin.com UNIVERSITEPARK BULTEN | BULLETIN ISSN 2147-351X | e-ISSN 2564-8039 Copyright © 2021| ÜNİVERSİTEPARK Received August 18, 2021 Accepted October 4, 2021 Published Online December 21, 2021 CORRESPONDENCE Mohammed El Messaoudi m.elmessaoudi@edu.umi.ac.ma Faculty of Art and Humanities, UMI, Meknes, Morocco. AUTHOR DETAILS Additional information about the author is available at the end of the article. To cite this article: El Messaoudi, M. (2021). Soft Skills: Connecting Classrooms with the Workplace—A Systematic Review. Üniversitepark Bülten, 10(2): 116-138. OPEN ACCESS This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. RESEARCH ARTICLE Soft Skills: Connecting Classrooms with the Workplace—A Systematic Review Mohammed El Messaoudi ABSTRACT Background/purpose – Recent evidence concedes that the modern workplace has recently undergone a tremendous change. Emerging workplace exigencies shifted the pendulum towards soft skills, a new [old] set of skills significantly required (from employees) by employers. In response, the “Bachelor System” has been adopted by the Moroccan Ministry of Education and Training as a panacea to accoutre university students with these on-demand skills. Materials/methods – This systematic review was geared towards retrieving, synthesizing, and appraising the literature on soft skills development and workplace readiness attributes desired by stakeholders in the Moroccan context. The study shed light on (20) journal articles (as the main unit of interest) published over a decade, ranging from January 2011 to February 2021 on soft skills in both higher education and the business sector. Results – Key results (generated via NVivo) accentuated the omnipresence of a soft skills gap (a mismatch) between academia and business, the extreme importance of soft ski lls in today’s local economy, and the urgent need to embed a specific set of soft skills in higher education curricula in order to prepare graduates for future jobs. Conclusion – Based on the systematic review and analysis of 20 articles, there is solid evidence that building a stronger Morocco requires building a more soft-skilled workforce. Keywords – Soft skills, workplace readiness, skills gap. To link to this article–https://dx.doi.org/10.22521/unibulletin.2021.102.2