Understanding the Skills Gap between Higher Education Institutions and the Software Engineering Industry
For UK higher education institutions, this provides data-driven insights to align curricula with industry needs, though the analysis is limited to one country and a specific methodology.
The study maps the skills gap between UK university curricula and software engineering industry demands by analyzing 300 job postings and 30 curricula, finding that Software Design and Planning is the most demanded skill (88.68% of jobs) but underrepresented in curricula, while Database Management is overemphasized.
In the rapidly evolving field of software engineering, the skills required of graduates entering the job market are constantly changing. Several studies have identified a gap between the skills taught in university curricula and those demanded by the software engineering industry. This chapter investigates the technical skill and expertise gap between higher education institutions (HEIs) and the UK software engineering industry by mapping job descriptions to the skills included in computer science degree programmes. A custom web scraping and text analysis tool, utilising fuzzy matching, was developed to extract and categorise skills from 300 job postings and undergraduate curricula from 30 UK universities. The analysis showed that the curricula place a strong emphasis on Programming Languages (18%) and Database Management (12.83%). In contrast, the industry s most frequently requested skill category is Software Design and Planning, which appears in approximately 88.68% of job descriptions, highlighting its critical importance. General Programming Language and System Structures also show strong demand, present in over 78.30% and 66.04% of postings, respectively. The mapping indicates that areas such as System Structures and Software Domains are significantly underrepresented in curricula, while Database Management and Compiler Design may be overemphasised. These insights can support HEIs in aligning their programmes with industry needs, supporting the preparation of graduates for dynamic careers in software engineering.