It became apparent pretty earlier in the discussions about the predicted data science talent gap that no single constituency was going to address the shortage of analytics talent on its own.
Potential employers in myriad industries couldn't train enough data scientists on their own, and the universities that had to groom future generations of analytics talent needed some ramp-up time and an understanding of what skills and experiences graduating students would need to find their way into and through the workforce.
If you can't go it alone, you turn to partnerships, and that is just what universities and industry -- particularly the tech sector -- did in working together to launch and shape new data science programs.
To the traditionalists in the education space, "industry partnership" is a concept that has no place on a college campus. College is viewed as an idyllic place where learning should be unencumbered by business relationships. I'm not sure when that view was reality. Maybe it was true 100 years ago, but I know that business interests were in place on campus 50 years ago. Even that long ago, colleges struck deals that brought potential employers on-campus to advise on a curriculum and to recruit students.
The goal is to add some value to that college degree, value that can include being job-ready on day one of employment. So we are seeing colleges develop data science programs designed to meet the needs of the workplace.
Among the tech companies supporting data science education is SAS (sponsor of this site), which will highlight the work of more than a dozen colleges that it has partnered with at the Analytics Experience 2016 conference, taking place in Las Vegas next week.
For a tech company like SAS the benefits of such a partnership include seeing a growing number of young people and career changers embrace analytics and find meaningful work. While some students who are products of such partnerships might end up working for the sponsoring company, most help to fill the need in myriad industries.
Among the colleges participating at Analytics Experience is Oklahoma State University. Goutam Chakraborty is director of the data science programs at Oklahoma State, and has been working to expand data science studies since long before the gloomy predictions of an analytics talent shortage emerged in 2012.
Chakraborty joins All Analytics Radio on Wednesday, Sept. 7, at 2 pm EDT, to discuss the evolution of data science education and how Oklahoma State and other universities are preparing data scientists for the real world of employment.
