To deans and professors of data science programs,

I am a graduate of a master’s program and it has helped me get to where I am today; a manager of a data science team in a fortune 500 company. My company has had great success with hiring others from data science programs across the country, but recent rounds of interviews have highlighted a growing concern.

The variability in the quality of students graduating from programs is becoming much too high, recently I had what looked like two qualified candidates program bomb out of a 30min phone screen in 7-8min. It was clear they had little grasp of how or when they might apply what they've learned or what is important in the industry. I contrast this with the other hires we've had and wonder how can they be so different?

Data science is about bringing clarity to ambiguity, whether it's finding patterns in messy data or explaining actions to take to stakeholders. I believe many data science programs need to break away from the mold of 'cookie cutter data science' and help prepare students for their time in the industry. They need to think critically about why they are doing what they are doing because in the real world there is no recipe to follow for solving problems.

I believe that many data science programs are setting up students for false expectations of what it's like to work in the field. I feel that many programs tell but then gloss over the fact that much of the time and value is a result of good data preparation. This preparation isn't just removing outliers, scaling and handling missing values. It's connecting to source systems, joining disparate data together and building features to represent observed patterns in the data. I believe this is something missing from most programs. Finally, I feel that students are primed to always expect things to just work. In the real world there are many times that you can't confirm a pattern and that's just as important, accuracy is relative to the problem and explainability trumps complexity in most cases!

As a master’s degree holder, a hiring manager and fellow data scientist, I have vested interest in seeing these programs improve as their quality reflects on me. I hope you take my concerns to heart and would be happy to chat further if given the chance.

Best,

John Hogue

Manager, Data Science

(Opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my company)

#datascience #machinelearning #masters