Source-linked AI summary
Closing the gap between software engineering education and industrial needs
Vahid Garousi, Görkem Giray, Eray Tüzün, Cagatay Catal, Michael Felderer
TL;DR
Software engineering education may not fully match the skills needed in industry, creating a need to synthesize evidence on important skills and graduate knowledge gaps. This paper conducts a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of 33 studies, finding strong importance for professional practice and soft skills alongside requirements, design, and testing.
Problem
Software engineering graduates may face difficulties because university-learned skills do not fully match those needed in industry.
Method
The paper uses a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to synthesize quantitative evidence from 33 studies.
Results
Requirements, design, and testing are important across the reviewed studies, while recent studies place software engineering professional practice, project management, and testing among the top three topics.
Takeaways & Limitations
The findings support greater attention to professional practice, soft skills, requirements, design, testing, and real-world examples in software engineering education.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
According to different reports, many recent software engineering graduates often face difficulties when beginning their professional careers, due to misalignment of the skills learnt in their university education with what is needed in industry. To address that need, many studies have been conducted to align software engineering education with industry needs. To synthesize that body of knowledge, we present in this paper a systematic literature review (SLR) which summarizes the findings of 33 studies in this area. By doing a meta-analysis of all those studies and using data from 12 countries and over 4,000 data points, this study will enable educators and hiring managers to adapt their education / hiring efforts to best prepare the software engineering workforce.
1 INTRODUCTION
Software engineering graduates may face career-start difficulties because university curricula can emphasize theoretical and technical foundations over skills needed in practice. This review synthesizes empirical studies to identify important industry skills and graduate knowledge deficiencies.
- The review addresses a reported mismatch between skills learned in software engineering education and those needed in software engineering practice.
- The authors initiated the review after industry and graduate feedback highlighted the need to align software engineering education with industrial needs.
- 33 empirical studies were synthesized to identify important industry skills and knowledge deficiencies among graduating software engineers.
- The study aims to clarify software engineering topic importance and knowledge gaps for educators and hiring managers.
2 THE REVIEW PROCEDURE
The authors conducted an empirical systematic literature review using established software engineering procedures and meta-analysis to consolidate evidence from selected studies.
- The search used Google Scholar and a query combining educational or skills requirements with software engineers or software developers.
- The review asked which industry skills matter most, where graduating students have knowledge deficiencies, and how important soft skills are alongside technical skills.
- Only empirically grounded studies focused on aligning software engineering education with industrial needs were included, reducing the pool from 94 to 33 papers.
- Meta-analysis combined quantitative data from the 33 primary studies to provide a consolidated view of software engineering education and industrial needs.
3 DATA FROM 12 COUNTRIES AND OVER 4,000 RESPONDENTS
The meta-synthesis combines evidence from studies conducted across 12 countries and up to 4,132 respondents, providing a broader dataset than individual country-specific studies.
- The combined dataset draws on studies from 12 countries, including substantial contributions from the USA, Canada, and South Africa.
- Up to 4,132 respondents contributed data across the 33 studies.
- Combining prior studies and the large dataset was intended to provide a more comprehensive view of software engineering education and industrial needs.
4 THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILLS IN THE INDUSTRY (RQ 1)
Across the reviewed studies, requirements, design, and testing were most important overall, while recent studies placed software engineering professional practice and project management among the top three.
- Requirements, design, and testing were the most important and frequently mentioned topics across all papers, followed by professional practice, project management, and development.
- In papers from the last five years, software engineering professional practice, project management, and testing became the top three topics.
- Software engineering professional practice includes professionalism, group dynamics, and communication skills associated with modern agile development.
- Mathematical and engineering foundations and software engineering economics ranked low in both comparisons.
- Requirements, testing, and design were considered more important than development, a pattern not always reflected in software engineering education embedded within computer science curricula.
5 KNOWLEDGE GAPS: HIGHLIGHTING THE TOPICS THAT WE SHOULD TEACH MORE (RQ 2)
The review identifies knowledge gaps by comparing topic importance with university learning, highlighting where software engineering education needs the most improvement. High-importance, high-gap topics receive the greatest attention, while low-importance, low-gap topics are least critical.
- The review calculated normalized knowledge-gap averages from eight studies and plotted them against topic importance in Figure 2.The knowledge gap was generally measured as the difference between importance in the job and university learning.
- Configuration management, SE models and methods, and SE process require the greatest educational attention because they combine high importance with high knowledge gaps.
- Low-importance, high-gap topics need the next level of educational attention despite their relatively lower industrial importance.
- High-importance, low-gap topics indicate that university programs are generally performing well, with development slightly entering this quadrant in one scatter plot.
- Low-importance, low-gap topics are least critical for improvement, and mathematical foundations fall into this quadrant in both scatter plots.
6 HARD SKILLS ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH: HAVE YOU GOT SOFT SKILLS? (RQ 3)
The review finds that soft skills complement technical skills in software engineering and are widely recognized as important for graduates. Teamwork, communication, leadership, and critical thinking are especially prominent, with some studies ranking soft skills above hard skills.
- Soft skills include team and interpersonal abilities that support individual learning, team performance, client relations, and awareness of business context.
- Twenty-four of 33 studies recognized soft-skill importance, especially teamwork and communication, leadership, and critical thinking.These categories appeared in 19, 13, and 11 studies, respectively.
- Industry evidence describes soft skills as a critical employment hurdle because employers often view them as untrainable in the workplace.
- Some studies found soft skills more important than hard skills for entry-level roles, with one reporting seven of the eight most important skills were soft skills.
- The importance of soft skills aligns with the high importance of SE professional practice, which includes professionalism, group dynamics, and communication skills.
7 OTHER INTERESTING FINDINGS
Additional findings concern what software engineering programs should emphasize and how they should teach it. The reviewed studies recommend reducing some traditional content while increasing practical exposure to realistic systems and projects.
- The review reports over-emphasis on mathematics and business under-emphasis, alongside evidence that mathematical knowledge is forgotten while software knowledge is acquired on the job.
- Studies recommend teaching through real-world software systems, practical experience, team assignments, and industry projects rather than only adjusting topic coverage.
- One recommendation replaces greenfield projects with work on pre-existing codebases involving bug fixing, feature development, and interaction with experienced colleagues or project managers.
8 IMPLICATIONS AND ROAD AHEAD
The review emphasizes professional practice, soft skills, selected technical activities, and realistic examples as central to aligning software engineering education with industry needs. It also identifies persistent knowledge gaps and argues that mathematics and engineering foundations are often overemphasized.
- The review’s main findings combine high importance for SE professional practice and soft skills with knowledge gaps in configuration management, SE models and methods, and SE process.
- The authors began aligning course materials with important topics and identified greatest gaps in configuration management, SE models and methods, SE process, design, and testing.
- Mathematical and engineering foundations are often overemphasized, supporting further differentiation of software engineering from computer science programs.