Are requirements engineering courses covering what industry needs? a preliminary analysis of the United States situation

In the United States, only few undergraduate curricula for computing-related field majors have an entire course dedicated to requirements engineering (RE). Usually, these are the bachelors of science in software engineering (BS SWE), while bachelors of science in computer science (BS CS) cover the topic during an overview course on software engineering, and dedicate only a couple of weeks to RE. Recent studies have shown that companies have specific demands for the competences that requirements engineers should have, and often such competences, such as analytical thinking and communication skills, are not sufficiently covered by RE textbooks and courses. However, no systematic analysis has been performed on the actual content of RE-related courses. In this paper, we survey what is taught in academia in RE-related courses. Our analysis is based on the data collected from more than 40 universities in the United States that offer a BS SWE. We show potential misalignments between what is offered by courses and industry needs, and we propose a research plan to further investigate this situation and to develop possible remedies for it

A Systematic Literature Review of Requirements Engineering Education

Requirements engineering (RE) has established itself as a core software engineering discipline. It is well acknowledged that good RE leads to higher quality software and considerably reduces the risk of failure or budget-overspending of software development projects. It is of vital importance to train future software engineers in RE and educate future requirements engineers to adequately manage requirements in various projects. To this date, there exists no central concept of what RE education shall comprise. To lay a foundation, we report on a systematic literature review of the feld and provide a systematic map describing the current state of RE education. Doing so allows us to describe how the educational landscape has changed over the last decade. Results show that only a few established author collaborations exist and that RE education research is predominantly published in venues other than the top RE research venues (i.e., in venues other than the RE conference and journal). Key trends in RE instruction of the past decade include involvement of real or realistic stakeholders, teaching predominantly elicitation as an RE activity, and increasing student factors such as motivation or communication skills. Finally, we discuss open opportunities in RE education, such as training for security requirements and supply chain risk management, as well as developing a pedagogical foundation grounded in evidence of effective instructional approaches