Future-Proofing Higher Vocational Education: Do Curricula Prepare Students with the Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills Needed for Tomorrow's World?

Labour markets increasingly demand social, emotional, and behavioural (SEB) skills, yet it remains unclear to what extent higher vocational education (HVE) curricula explicitly articulate these competencies and align with workplace needs. This study analyses 96 national bachelor competency profiles taught within Dutch HVE bachelor programmes, using the Behavioural, Emotional and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI) framework and NLP-based classification, and links curricular explicitness to nationwide graduate survey data on perceived skill acquisition and labour-market demand (N ≈ 23,880). SEB skills are present across curricula but unevenly articulated. Innovation and selfmanagement are most explicit, whereas emotional resilience is least visible. Greater curricular explicitness is generally associated with higher perceived preparedness, though the strength and direction of this relationship differ across SEB domains. Alignment with labour-market demand is strongest for innovation, while selfmanagement and social engagement remain underrepresented. As a practical contribution, we develop a Skills Scanner to systematically detect SEB skills in curricular documents.