Introduction to the Broad Concepts Underlying this Book
This introductory chapter presents general suggestions on the concept of quality-assured industry-oriented higher education in software engineering that relate to and underpin the other chapters in the book. The body of work reported here was based initially on the close co-operation since 2002 between Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland and Harbin Institute of Technology in China, and on the subsequent development and propagation of this co-operation across Europe and China. The experiences described come from a range of countries, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, Romania and Turkey, as well as China and Ireland. They capture many of the interesting and valuable lessons of these past eight years of thinking and research and development relating to international software industry-oriented higher education in the broad context of the global striving towards the knowledge economy. They make the case for a strong role for software industry-oriented higher education in the production of the software architects, developers, and engineers required for the future.