KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 (Bernama) -- The higher education ministry has aggressively embarked on a mission to imbibe students with soft-skills development programmes.

This was because, local graduates lacked the required soft skills to be marketable and employable, said Deputy Minister Datuk Dr Hou Kok Chung.

He said students were now compelled to fulfill a minimum standard of seven generic student attributes (GSA) when they graduated.

The GSAs are communication skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, team work skills, continuous learning and information management, entrepreneurship skills, moral and professional ethics and leadership skills

Dr Hou said that this year, the ministry had set a key performance indicator (KPI) to ensure that 90 per cent of students at public higher education institutions fulfilled the minimum standard of seven GSAs, as compared to 76 per cent last year.

In his speech at a seminar, 'The Making of Young Buffet 2010' today, he said students at higher education institutions were constantly facing challenges related to finances.

"At this age, where they are maturing into working adults, it is timely that they be exposed to proper education on basic financial management and investment knowledge," he said.

He also touched on the big challenge faced by the ministry with regard to the National Higher Education Loan Funds (PTPTN).

Dr Hou said that the government had so far, approved RM31.6 billion to about 1.46 million students.

Nevertheless, he noted, while it was easy for PTPTN to make payouts, it was unfortunately tedious when it came to loan recipients making repayments.