It’s a well-known fact that there is a huge gap between the demand and supply of analytics talent across the world. Though it has taken some time, but educationalists all across have recognized this fact and have created unique blends of analytics courses.

Every month, we hear a new course starting at a globally recognized university. But where is India in all this commotion? Do we see a similar uptick in analytics education at Indian Universities and Institutes?

In this report, we investigate the differences in the volume of analytics education between USA and India. Do we see similar activity in analytics education both in USA and India, given that India is being well recognized today to provide quality analytics services to organizations worldwide?

Introduction

According to Information Week–

“… hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide are gearing up business analytics, machine learning and other programs aimed at analysis of data in a business context.

Data growth is headed in one direction, so it’s clear that the skills gap is a long-term problem. But many businesses just can’t wait the three to five years it might take today’s undergrads to become business-savvy professionals.” [1]

The above quote aptly briefs an alarming need of analytics education and why universities around the world are scrambling to get started on the route towards being analytics education leaders. Obviously, the first mover advantage would define the best courses in years to come i.e. institutes that take up the analytics journey sooner would have a much mature footing in next few years and they would find it easier to attract and place students.

According to Datanami–

“Whether through targeted certification programs or rigorous, full-time Masters programs, universities are finding ways to reel in students and churn out new data leaders –not to mention boost their own cred as the new big data learning centers.” [2]

According to our estimates, the ratio of analytics practitioners in USA and India is almost 5:1, i.e. for every five analytics professionals in USA we would find 1 professional in India. Yet, we do not find the same level of activity in analytics education between India and USA. Not to forget that this gap is getting smaller every day. As India becomes a hotbed of analytics outsourcing and more Indian organizations adopts analytics in-house, we would find much more demand of analytics professionals in India, in an already heated up market.

According to Prithwis Mukerjee, Program Director – Business Analytics at Praxis Business School

“I believe that the influence of Analytics is only going to grow moving forward and India with its natural advantage in the capability to price ratio will become the analytics hub of the world. We thus need to prepare ourselves for this and the key to that is creating infrastructure to develop trained professionals.”

Analytics Courses – USA

We compiled a list of analytics courses at various US universities. We tried to be as comprehensive as possible, yet the list might be very different very soon given the alarming rate of activity in this area. Also, these are exclusive analytics courses i.e. we have excluded all courses where analytics is offered as a concentration/ specialization within another course. If we include courses with analytics specialization, the list might be much bigger.

According to Information Week–

“All of these programs are geared to candidates who already have undergraduate degrees, and most favor professionals with three or more years of work experience. In many cases part-time options are available, so students can continue to work as they learn more about big data analytics.” [3]

Also, according to KDNuggets– 

“Education in Data Analytics is in big demand, and this trend especially accelerated in 2012, as seen in the chart above.” [4]

India

Here’s a similar list for India.

Its quite evident from the above list that the analytics education in India has yet to cover much ground before it reaches the size similar to USA, for the demand of professionals in India. Yet, the pace seems to be good. 4 out of the above 10 courses commenced just this year. We hear from close quarters that more premier institutes would start offering analytics courses.

This is encouraging development, yet there is a need to fast track the development of these analytics courses. Also, much of the activity is concentrated at the levels of premier institutes. We need to institutionalize analytics education at more B level or C Level graduate schools.

Few Points stand out here-

1. There would certainly be more analytics courses starting next year at most B-Schools in India.
2. Institutes that get started with analytics education early would be winners in long term. Most MBA schools we talk to recognize the fact that there is an uptick in analytics hiring at their placements and recruiters today ask for graduates with ready knowledge of analytics, to lower the cost and time to deployment of these MBA grads.
3. Despite a demand, most MBA grads are not analytics ready and thus not able to quickly jump on a high paying, in demand analytics job. Today, most MBA courses are completely dry of any analytics education; leave aside a full-blown analytics course.
4. Even with a strong motive to get started with analytics courses, most schools would find it extremely difficult to start an analytics course. The reason being scarcity of quality analytics faculty and the steep time required to design a full-blown course curriculum.
5. Most often than not, institutes find it easier to collaborate with external players with strong expertise in analytics education, to design/ manage/ market their in-house analytics courses.

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