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A shortage of data science and analytic skills stands out as one of the nation’s most urgent of skill gaps.
New job postings in the field are expected to reach more than 2.7 million by 2020, according to 2017 a report from the Business Higher Education Forum and Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC).
In a direct response to the growing impact of computing and data in an ever-changing digital world, universities across the nation are opening schools, forming research centers and offering new data-driven majors to meet the demands of the workforce. And they are betting that students will follow.
Meeting Rising Demand
As technological changes are racing forward, businesses are compelled to reinvent themselves and are desperately looking for trained workers who will help them keep up and adapt to this new work revolution.
“The demand for graduates and the skills they have has changed profoundly,” says David Yermack, professor of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency at New York University’s Stern School of Business, the first U.S. college to offer the major. “There is great interest from companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and so forth, who realize that if they don’t incorporate technology into their business models, they will be at great risk of becoming irrelevant.”
Cornell University is a leading Ivy League when it comes to crypto and higher education — it offers one of the largest selections of crypto-related courses. The 28 courses offered on the subject include “Anthropology of Money,” which explores “the social and cultural meanings of numbers, mobile money cryptocurrency, and other alternative currency systems,” according to the course description.
Also known as a hub for blockchain discovery, Stanford University opened its Center for Blockchain Research last fall. It’s location as the locus of Silicon Valley’s academic and entrepreneurial scene puts the school in an enviable position to offer world-class conferences for the crypto community.
It is no surprise, however, that the vast majority of the workforce does not have the access to these programs or the sophisticated skills that companies need.
While 69% of employers say they would favor job candidates with proficiency in data science, only 23% of educators say their students will have those skills by the time they graduate, according to a poll conducted by Gallup.
But the tide is turning. Students appear to be closely following the signals from the labor market, with universities seeing increased enrollment in their tech programs.
In 2015, when UC Berkeley first offered their course on Foundations of Data Science, also known as Data 8, 100 students signed up for it. By this spring, enrollment dramatically increased to around 1,500 students, and the course has even been adopted by community colleges, such as San Jose City College, who are starting to incorporate data science into their curriculum.
“Data 8 is hugely popular. We are just trying to keep up with it,” says Paul Alivisatos, the executive vice chancellor and provost at UC Berkeley.
Other universities are launching new centers that seek to address the demands from specific areas within data science, such as the University of West Florida, which recently launched its Center for Cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is a rapidly-evolving field and it has become a national security issue for the United States since there are more than 300,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs across the nation, according to Cybersecurity Ventures.
“Our university wanted to develop a center that could connect with the community and offer innovative solutions that meet real world needs, meet the growing cybersecurity workforce crisis and that can move at a much more rapid pace compared to traditional academic programs,” says Eman El-Sheikh, director of the center.
However, while universities strive to open more routes to jobs within the data science sector, they also face the challenge of finding and retaining qualified faculty who can teach it. For example, Yermack says that because cryptocurrency and blockchain are such new topics and most professors are tenured, they may not be anxious to learn new material. But many others are lured into the private sector by the shortage of qualified candidates and the ensuing lucrative salaries. According to a 2018 study by Burtch Works, a leading recruiting firm, the median salary for a data scientist can be as high as $250,000.
“Developing incentives that will keep talent and expertise within academia is equally important,” says El-Sheikh.
Data Science Beyond Tech
With 95% of employers saying that data science skills are hard to find, the need for data-savvy workers extends beyond the tech industry.
“More fields want to incorporate data science because important developments in statistics, computation and artificial intelligence have led to a point where diverse data sources can be integrated together to create a more meaningful picture,” Alivisatos says.
There has been a 52% growth in the number of accredited programs in data science and analytics since 2010, the Business Higher Education Forum reports. And nearly 25% of open faculty jobs at UC Berkeley are looking for applicants who will analyze data science through the humanities, sciences and engineering fields.
A multidisciplinary approach will rise as a hallmark in data science education as universities increase the amount of departments that offer classes on the subject..
This fall, MIT will launch the Schwarzman College of Computing, a $1 billion investment that represents an ambitious initiative to equip students in the field of artificial intelligence and educate them to consider the ethical and societal responsibilities that come with the powerful tools of computing.
Julie Shah, associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, says that the college is meant to facilitate the types of interdisciplinary opportunities and collaborations for the benefit of the larger enterprise.
“Computing is changing the nature of how we do research, how we do science, how we do engineering across every discipline,” she says. “The tools coming out of it provide new opportunities and methods of inquiry for everything from biology and chemistry and into the social sciences and the humanities.”
The high demand in data science is not only creating new professional disciplines, but it is also transforming the practice of established fields of study. Such initiatives will allow students to graduate with high levels of data proficiency, regardless of their majors and equip them for the jobs openings that are in desperate need of being filled.
“Graduates do not only go into tech — they go all around different disciplines and that’s what makes it so exciting for the students,” says Alivisatos. “There might be areas low in data science and there are even whole aspects of careers that can be created once you have these kinds of foundational tools in your tool belt.”
