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Abstract Although higher education is mostly perceived as a fundamental tool that leads to successful career path, it’s methodology guides to another track. The profession of architecture is always changing, while the architecture education has been slow to respond to this change, especially in the Middle East . It’s undeniable that all educational institutions claim that their graduates are the most suitable for the job market. Consequently, the design of architecture curricula, starting from visions, philosophies, methods and contents attained a remarkable importance aiming to graduate plug and play calibers in the world of practice. However, architecture schools need to reconsider the ways in which the curriculum helps to develop the skills and the 21st century competencies needed in the world of work. Universities often focus on specific technical skills which in turn serve traditional architectural specialties, they end up neglecting the front-line jobs that require variety of soft skills aiding the business development. Worth mentioning students are highly concerned about what to submit rather than how to present it, since most of the weight goes to the technical part of the submission, while in real life the how is as important as the what. Students should also have an awareness of the opportunities they will find in the labor market from an early stage of their undergraduate years so they can determine their career interest and focus on related demanded employability skills through university study. Researchers claim that most employers are satisfied by graduates’ technical knowledge, however there are other skills they are concerned about that graduates must attain in order to succeed in acquiring a good job. Consequently, graduates must be provided with skills that equip them for the real-life practice competencies, that may not be concerned with a specific area of knowledge. It’s alleged that formal architectural education doesn’t prepare graduates properly for the world of practice and that undergraduates are not confident about their readiness for professional practice. This is the opportunity this research is tackling through a Literature review to define curriculum according to architecture schools, to identify the philosophies on which these curricula are based on including their missions and visions, and identifying the National Academic Reference Standards that each architecture school in Egypt should be achieving. The second part is concerned with defining employability, related terms and identifying employability skills that are mostly demanded by employers nowadays and presenting current initiatives, pedagogies and strategies to improve university to work transition. Then two types of surveys will be conducted, the first will target fresh graduates in order to figure out what they think is not covered through their academic life and how could they managed to fill the transition gap between university to work. The second survey will target architecture firms employers and architecture schools’ professors in Egypt aiming to figure out the employability skills employers are seeking for nowadays, which universities provide these types of employees, employers’ suggestions for better transition between university to work, identifying the improvement plans that architecture schools in Egypt are taking recently in their latest bylaws to close this gap and professors’ suggestions for further improvement. The last chapter concludes the results derived from the literature review, case studies and the current situation analysis , followed by recommendations for filling the gap between architectural schools’ curricula in Egypt and the employability skills demanded by employers. |