The Practical Relevance of IT Education: Skill Requirements and Education Expectations of Practitioners

This paper suggests two interpretations of the practical relevance of IT education at the university level, as the congruence between the skill requirements of IT experts and the skills provided by the education, and as the congruence between practitioners’ education expectations concerning the skills to be taught and the skills provided by the education. The paper analyzes these two interpretations empirically based on a questionnaire study and shows that the two interpretations differ significantly, lead to quite different conclusions about the practical relevance of the curriculum and education, and differ in their stability when background variables such as the gender, age, job category and year of graduation of the respondents are taken into consideration.