Software engineering education

In a field as rapidly growing as software engineering, the education problem splits into two major parts-university education and industrial education. (Some of which is given at university locations, as short courses, but considered industrial education here.) Both parts draw on the same underlying disciplines and methodologies. But the people involved-both teachers and students-have different objectives and characteristics. At the university level students are young, inexperienced, and relatively homogeneous in background and abilities. At the industrial level, students are older, more experienced, and vary considerably in background and abilities. In this paper, we discuss the underlying commonalities and the overlaid differences of university and industrial education in software engineering. The commonalities in discipline and methodologies involve the study and understanding of the Software Process, as discussed in Section II of this special issue, and of the "Tools" and "Know How" discussed in Section III. The differences are due to the characteristics and objectives of students, and show up on curricula content and structure and in course definition.