Bond the Gap between Academic and Industry Requirements for Undergraduate Civil Engineering Students in Iraq

Abstract

Abstract In the last twenty years, civil engineering industry has been improved significantly due to the expanded use of technology and innovations in project management. This progress represented as a challenge to universities to provide competence engineers with the right capabilities to be fit in the new job requirements and able to lead this industry to the new era. As this problem considered a global issue, it has a particular situation in Iraq. This resulted from the sharp change in the Iraqi construction industry after recent political change in 2003. This study aims to investigate the current industry expectation from graduated civil engineers and compare it with actual competences that engineers learned from their study in Iraqi universities. This research implements both a qualitative and quantitative approach to collect valuable and reliable data. This has been achieved by sending an online questionnaire to senior engineers working for both public and private organizations. In addition, another set of questions send to students to evaluate their knowledge to identify the gap. This study identified a considerable gap between current civil engineering education and industry expectation, which mainly resulted in project management skills. This gap needs to be addressed in the near future to make sure that Iraqi civil engineers maintain their chances to get hired from foreign companies and be able to lead the Iraqi construction industry to the global market.