Relevance for Software Engineering

The relevance of the education of software engineers to the profession of software engineering is obvious. It derives simply from the fact that those who are educated to become software engineers may have some influence on the way the field is shaped. Since the field of software engineering is relatively young (see Chapter 8, The History of Software Engineering ), this influence may be even more significant than in the case of more mature domains. Indeed, the citations presented at the beginning of this chapter indicate the close interconnection between academia (where software engineers are educated ) and the software industry (where the knowledge gained at the university is applied). Based on the literature that discusses this interconnection, it seems that the relevance of the education of software engineers to the field of software engineering is relatively high, and that gaps between the education of software engineers and the way software engineering is accepted in the industry can and should be bridged.