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Full time or part time, in house or at home—Indian techies have a choice of courses and certification in Data Science and Business Analytics
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google points out: There were 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization till 3003. That much information is now created, every 2 days. An exabyte is a billion gigabytes or 1 followed by 18 zeroes.
Put it another way: 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone -- by posts to social media sites, emails, digital pictures and videos, purchase and banking transaction records, and cell phone GPS.... The numbers are mind boggling. Which is why, what they call Big Data is turning out to be a big professional opportunity in fields like storage and analysis. One discipline that flows from this is Data Science and it has seen a fillip as a career opportunity after Harvard Business Review said: Data science is the sexiest job of the 21century.
Data scientists are therefore in demand along with Business Analytics experts.
This year has seen multiple organizations offer courses in Data Science for India-based professionals.
Full time and part time
The latest is Manipal University which has commenced full time and part time programmes in Data Science, which will culminate into a PG Diploma from the university.
To ensure that the programme has strong industry relevance, Manipal has tied up with leading corporates like Experian (a $4.8 billion global information services company), Genpact (a global leader in business process management and services) and IBM’s Big Data University as partners who will help in building the curriculum, provide real case studies for students and participate in the placement process.
Weekend course
A post graduate programme in Data Science, Business Analytics and Big Data (PGP-DS-BA-BigData) is also delivered by Aegis School of Business, Data Science & Telecommunication in association with IBM. Students who earn a PGP develop deep quantitative capabilities and technical expertise and are equipped to create business and social value by extracting useful insights and applying it in a various industries by playing a role of Data Scientist, Big Data Adviser and modern Business Analyst. They also conduct weekend post graduate executive programmes in Mumbai, Pune, and Bangalore in November-December this year.
MOOC course
Massively Online Open Course (MOOC) pioneer, Coursera has annouced the first ever online Master's degree course in Data Science -- jointly with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The MCS-DS builds expertise in four core areas of computer science: data visualization, machine learning, data mining and cloud computing, plus honing skills in statistics and information science across 32 credit hours. Anyone who registers on Coursera will have access to all of the courses that make up the onsite degree, including lessons, activities and projects developed by award-winning Illinois faculty.
In order to earn the University of Illinois degree, learners will also be expected to complete additional course assessments with access to guidance, feedback and support from Illinois faculty and staff. Like all Coursera courses, students can take up individual modules for free but to get the degree, the tuition fee, is $ 19,200 ( Rs 12.7 lakhs)
Mid-career booster
Leading India-based online IT, cloud and mobility education providers Edureka have added modules on Data science for mid career IT professionals, even as they launch live web support 24X7 to their students on subjects such as Big Data, Analytics, Cloud and Mobility.
The Data Science course covers topics on Hadoop, Analytics with R and Machine Learning techniques encompassing the complete Data Science study. This Data Science course is designed to provide knowledge and skills to become a successful Data Scientist for mid-career professionals. The duration of the course is 4 weeks costing Rs 24,995 with 157 students enrolling for the course on the very first day.
Says Lovleen Bhatia-Co-founder & Chairman, Edureka: "As 'Data Science' is an emerging field, there are plenty of opportunities available world across be it in IT, Healthcare, Retail, Government offices, Academics, Life Sciences, Oceanography, etc. There is a clear need now and in the foreseeable future for many more data science professionals. These people need to have the strong statistical knowledge, software engineering ability and communication skills which only a well-designed multidisciplinary program can provide. Data scientist as a job title is significantly trending upwards.”
