Software Industry Perception of Academic Collaboration

Software Engineering is shaped and used by both the industry and academia, whose goals and contributions are different. Since there are some mismatches in perceptions of software practitioners about academics and academic activities, the level of Industry-Academia Collaboration (IAC) is low. To investigate different opinions to increase such IACs, we conducted an online survey. The survey was responded by 628 software practitioners, whose undergraduate degree was completed in Türkiye, working in 13 countries. In this study, we explored how the perceptions about academia are varying with different cross-factors. The results showed that the perceptions are directly related to the profiles of the practitioners and previous experience on IACs. We believe that this study sheds light on improving mutual understanding of each side to bridge the gap between industry and academia.