Are Colleges and Universities satisfying
student’s and employer’s analytics education needs?
A few years ago, after observing
the growing analytics job market and experiencing the need for foundation
analytics knowledge and skills in both IT and business communities, I began to
research business analytics training programs.
I learned that analytics vendor training focuses primarily on technology
product functionality; association training is largely slanted toward or
presented by sponsoring vendors or consultants, who are trying to identify
post-training opportunities to sell their products and services; and, college
and university analytics courses are almost all taught by instructors who have little
to no analytics business experience, struggle to provide practical business
case examples and offer little or no hands-on skills development, so the
students receive little or no career-ready skills. With no source for unbiased, high quality
analytics knowledge and skills education, it’s no surprise that the analytics
job market is growing, with the average salary for business analytics
professionals increasing 4.3% to $111,388 (TDWI 2015 Salary Survey).
Recently, the president of a
rapidly growing healthcare software company was being interviewed and was asked,
“How could universities better prepare their students for the jobs you are
offering?” He quickly replied that “universities
could provide more hands-on application software and analytics courses because
he can’t find any new graduates with the skills required to fill his jobs.” His company is hiring 1,000 new employees
this year. Yes, the analytics job market
is good. Yes, I’m working on a plan to help undergraduate, graduate and working professionals learn business analytics best practices. I'll keep you posted...
