Data Science at Community College
Today is August 20th, 2020. This is important to note because the state of data science in education is changing quicker than it ever has before. I graduated from community college 1 year ago, and I had never heard of the field. Now, it’s considered the hottest job of 2019 by Forbes. They say:
Data Scientist is the best job in America for the 4th year in a row (4.7 job score, 4.3 job satisfaction rating) with 6,510 open positions paying a median base salary of $108,000.
Research, Resources and References
While universities are quickly learning how versatile and lucrative a data science major can be, community colleges may find it difficult to keep up. Currently, no community college in New Jersey offers an associate’s degree program in data science or data analytics, leaving transfer students who are interested in the field at a disadvantage. Not having an easily transferable program makes it harder for students to graduate in time compared to traditional majors. I have been part of that struggle, but I’ve also spoken to many other incoming data science transfer students when I worked as a data science transfer mentor at UC Berkeley. These are some common questions from an intended data science student:
- Should I complete my associate’s degree as a mathematics, computer science or statistics major?
- Are there any online courses that can help me prepare for a data science curriculum?
- If I graduated community college as a math/computer science/statistics major, does that leave me at a disadvantage compared to other non-transfer students?
I hope community colleges begin answering these questions with the most straightforward solution: creating an associate’s degree program in data science. For the benefit of academic advisors or for students whose college does not offer this program, below is a proposed curriculum I created that would adequately prepare a community college student to transfer to universities such as UC Berkeley as a data science major. The program below satisfies all New Jersey state requirements and combines (for the most part) already existing classes from different programs.