Nowadays, the key role in the development of the economy and the progress of society is human knowledge. It is therefore understandable that students who acquire new and useful knowledge through their education and apply this knowledge in their workplace and contribute to the betterment of the economy and society, make our future. These students must develop a number of high-quality skills that will ensure their successful collage education and more favourable position in society and the labour market. Skills can be uniquely defined as specific skills of turning knowledge into action, or performing specific work and other activities. Academic, life and management skills are emphasized as basic skills categories for achieving success in academic education, personal life and business plan. In addition to the skills, an important role in the development of an individual in a successful member of society also has psychological characteristics. Psychological characteristics are relatively durable characteristics of an individual by which he is recognizable and which give him a certain advantage over others and are associated with the character of a person, attitudes, habits, etc. Psychological characteristics are most commonly divided into introversion and extroversion, locus of control, risk taking tendency, perception of decision making quality and desire for success. The aim of this research was to establish the persistence of differences in the degree of development of certain categories of skills among the first year students of university undergraduate and professional studies, and the persistence of differences between the psychological characteristics and the development of particular skill categories in the students of the first year of study. The research conducted on a sample of 364 students of the first year of the Faculty of Economics in Split. The research confirmed the first major hypothesis and established the persistence of differences in the degree of development of certain categories of skills among the undergraduate university and professional students, all of which are more developed in university undergraduate studies. The second main hypothesis concern of the difference between the psychological characteristics and the development of certain categories of students' skills was partially accepted and the results obtained were satisfactory given that there were more statistically significant differences between psychological characteristics and skills development among students compared to differences that were not statistically significant. 90