WGU Masters in Big Data

Discussion in 'IT and Computer-Related Degrees' started by Kizmet, Oct 18, 2016.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Yeah, that about says it, a new Masters program in Big Data at WGU

    New WGU Master
     
  2. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    “Organizations are being inundated with unprecedented quantities of data..."

    Unnecessary quantities of data might be a good guess.
     
  3. novadar

    novadar Member

    The degree is actually focused on Data Analytics and even the WGU page says that (M.S. Data Analytics) .

    The linking article is piggybacking on the term Big Data to get clicks. There is no mention of Hadoop, NoSQL or other "Big Data" technologies.

    Oracle SQL and SAS, while applicable to Big Data are not exclusively in that domain nor are they new. Case in point --- I've been writing "expert" Oracle SQL for 17 years now.
     
  4. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Nice clarification:biggthumpup:
     
  5. novadar

    novadar Member

    I don't want it to seem that I feel this program is a waste. It could fill a nice void in certain situations but by no means will it allow a person to land a job as a Data Scientist with this credential alone
     
  6. Warpnow

    Warpnow Member

    It sure is a shame that 8 of the credits are in SAS programming...R would have been a much better choice. Open source, much higher adoption rate now, and in the future SAS is likely to continue to fall off in favor of R.
     
  7. novadar

    novadar Member

    I thought that peculiar as well but years ago I was working as a consultant in my firm's Federal Consulting Practice and SAS was everywhere. Many organizations, especially their actuaries, are deeply entrenched in SAS. For what it's worth you can take a well-skilled SAS professional and teach them to do pretty much anything related to data and analytics. I am a big believer in people growing into new jobs and roles -- no matter what or how they learned.
     
  8. Warpnow

    Warpnow Member

    Its true that after you grasp the basics of one programming language and basic model building and feature selection it should be fairly easy to transition that to a new language, its just that right now its going to be alot easier to find an entry level job in most fields with experience in R. Its true that SAS is still used, but its typically because they have a team that uses SAS and are invested either via headcount of legacy code. People spinning up new departments and hiring aggressively, evaluating their options for the first time right now, will probably pick R or Python.

    The full SAS license for a single user can cost six figures, which limits its attractiveness compared to 100% free and as capable R.
     

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