Understanding the Skills Gap between Higher Education and Industry in the UK in Artificial Intelligence Sector

Abstract: As AI changes how businesses work, there is a growing need for people who can work in this sector. This paper investigates how well universities in United Kingdom offering courses in AI, prepare students for jobs in the real world. To gain insight into the differences between university curricula and industry demands we review the contents of taught courses and job advertisement portals. By using custom data scraping tools to gather information from job advertisements and university curricula, and frequency and Naive Bayes classifier analysis, this study will show exactly what skills industry is looking for. In this study we identified 12 skill categories that were used for mapping. The study showed that the university curriculum in the AI domain is well balanced in most technical skills, including Programming and Machine learning subjects, but have a gap in Data Science and Maths and Statistics skill categories.