IBM announces Data Science Professional Certificate on Coursera
The swelling demand for data scientists coupled with the evident skills gap has implications for the global economy as well as the tech industry. What’s causing it, and what can be done to address it?
In 2017, Burning Glass Technologies, Business-Higher Education Forum and IBM came together to produce a report on the demand for data science skills. Here are some of the highlights:
- It forecast that the number of jobs for all data openings will increase by 364,000 by 2020, bringing the total to 2,727,000
- The fastest-growing roles are Data Scientists and Advanced Analysts, which are projected to see demand spike by 28% by 2020
- DSA jobs remain open for 45 days— five days longer than the market average.
- The difficulty employers have filling DSA roles drives up salaries, and relative to other jobs, DSA jobs pay quite well. On average, they advertise an annual salary of USD 80,265—a premium of USD 8,736 relative to all bachelor’s and graduate-level jobs
- Compounding the skill shortage is the hybrid nature of many DSA jobs, which require a mix of disparate analytical skills and domain-specific expertise that may be difficult to develop in traditional training programs
- Machine learning, big data, and data science skills are the most challenging to recruit for and potentially can create the greatest disruption to ongoing product development and go-to-market strategies if not filled
According to a LinkedIn report, the top Data Science jobs in 2018 comprise – Data Scientist, Data Security Administrator, Data Analyst, Business Intelligence Analyst, and Network Administrator.
So, here are some questions for you:
What are you going to do to get ready to ride the ‘data’ rush wave?
To get you started in this area, IBM has developed the Data Science Professional Certificate on Coursera. It consists of 9 courses that are intended to arm you with latest job-ready skills and techniques in Data Science. The courses cover variety of data science topics including: open source tools and libraries, methodologies, Python, databases and SQL, data visualization, data analysis, and machine learning. You will practice hands-on in the IBM Cloud (at no additional cost) using real data science tools and real-world data sets.
The courses in the Data Science Professional Certificate include:
- What is Data Science
- Tools for Data Science
- Data Science Methodology
- Python for Data Science
- Databases and SQL for Data Science
- Data Visualization with Python
- Data Analysis with Python
- Machine Learning with Python
- Applied Data Science Capstone
Each of the courses also gives you an opportunity to earn an IBM open badge, which allows you to build your digital resume and makes you discoverable (by opting in) to potential employers.