Perceived Information Gap Between Academia and Industry: a Qualitative Study

Abstract

Extremely rapid advances in IT industry are taking place. New technologies, tools, methodologies and paradigms are emerging even before the previous ones become mature. In the meanwhile, academia is not adequately preparing itself for these advances. With this in mind we have conducted a survey to determine the information gap between the needs of the field and the situation in the classroom. The survey included a section to allow the respondents to express their opinions in free format. The aim of this paper is to focus exclusively on these opinions, while an accompanying paper presents the main results, describing the knowledge gap in various competence areas, in terms of areas of the IT profession. The free form expressed opinions of the participants may help educational institutions to tune their curriculum, and move away from a generic and static curriculum into a more adaptive one and adapt approaches in teaching IT related disciplines. The employees, one of the stakeholders of the survey, warned of the overly theoretical emphasis, and recommended that the courses include hands-on projects that address the practical needs of the industry. The number of courses should be reduced, and the courses should be practical, addressing industry needs. The final two years of the program courses should be clearly oriented towards industry needs. The other stakeholder of the survey, employers, pointed out that employees lack skills in all phases of software development processes and also need improvement in soft skills. The opinions of the survey takers indicate that the academia needs adjustments fulfilling the goal of properly preparing the students in information technology fields so that that the potential graduates are able to cope with the new and continuously changing challenges of the IT industry, and employers find ready-for-work employees without incurring extra training or orientation expenses (time and money).