
New online master's degree to train the data scientists of tomorrow - davelester
http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/news/online-datascience-masters-degree
======
pvnick
While this program seems interesting, valuable, and a step in the right
direction, the minute I read the $60,000 price tag I nearly choked on my gum
and quickly pressed the back button. Coursera classes for me at least in the
near future, hopefully within the next few years these degree programs will
scale a little better and costs will plummet.

~~~
geebee
It sounds like a great degree program, and I'm encouraged to see it go on-
line, but the $60K price tag seems over the top to me. Didn't Georgia Tech
just announce an online MS for $7,000?

I'm just not sure this makes sense. While tuition has gone way up at Berkeley,
most science and engineering degrees are considered academic, rather than
professional degrees, so the fees are considerably lower.

[http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Default.aspx?PageID=feesched.h...](http://registrar.berkeley.edu/Default.aspx?PageID=feesched.html)

So yeah, law or business school tuition+fees (professional program) are
between $50-$60 a year, but academic programs (which includes engineering) is
less than half that. A lot of this comes down to whether data science will
really be a "professional" degree with high earnings.

Truth is, it might, I'm not ruling it out. I got an MS in Industrial
Engineering from Berkeley after a math degree, hoping I could get something
practical. I had some good experiences, but I also spent what was to me a
depressing amount doing proofs about convex sets and stochastic processes. I
probably shouldn't complain, that's what an academic degree program is. Maybe
something like a professional program would have been much better for me.

Another question is whether holding this degree is valuable independent of
what you learn. I know that may sound silly, but it makes a difference.
Suppose you were allowed to study law courses on coursera. How much would it
be worth it to get to say your degree was officially from Harvard and now
qualify for the bar, even if all you did was quietly watch the videos and do
the homework? More than $60k, I'd say.

Could the same be said for data science? You've watched the identical videos
and done the homework... how much of a premium would it be worth to say you
got an MS degree online from Berkeley? It would be worth something sure, but
not as much as the law scenario. There's no "data science bar" that can
prevent you from practicing, and there are so many different acceptable degree
paths to becoming a data scientist. And while some may reasonably dispute
this, I have found high tech to be more concerned with what you know than
where you learned it.

All in all... sounds like a great degree, but 60K definitely gives me pause.

~~~
JPKab
You are being incredibly nice and understanding, and you shouldn't be. $60k
for an online class is just plain robbery. I'm sick and tired of this bullshit
that higher education has been ramming down our collective throats courtesy of
a system in which easily available, seemingly infinite credit on the part of
the students allows colleges to continuously seek out new revenue by burdening
students with ever increasing debt.

Its funny to me that state schools, including Berkeley, used to have
reasonable tuition up until the early 1980's, until the baby boomer voters in
each respective state demanded lower taxes and the politicians obliged by
cutting state tuition assistance year after year. When the state paid 90% of a
student's tuition, the colleges didn't have the option of constantly jacking
their price up. Suddenly, when it was student debt paying the bills, the
colleges stopped doing anything to cut the bloat.

Thank you Berkeley for again reminding me what a scam the academic
institutions have become.

~~~
anigbrowl
I agree. I desperately want to go back to school (didn't attend college in my
youth, and feel I am hitting the limits of self-education), but I'm not
willing to put _half the value of a house_ on a 4 year program.

~~~
pjlegato
Half the value of a house? That's barely a down payment in the SF Bay area,
where Berkeley is.

~~~
anigbrowl
a) My house is a 10 minute bus ride from UC Berkeley, b) I am plenty familiar
with house prices and down payments as it took us two years to find this one,
and c) I was talking specifically about a 4-year degree, which is likely to
cost more than $60k.

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727374
Alternatively: 1\. Take Coursera's excellent Intro to Data Science for free
2\. Spend time doing Kaggle competitions and learning along the way 3\. Profit

~~~
djvv
You would be surprised how many people in the field have never heard of
Kaggle.

~~~
achompas
Or how many in the field are extremely skeptical of any lessons an aspiring
analyst could learn from it.

~~~
joncooper
It seems that you know something about the field.

Perhaps rather than offering snappy responses with negative tones, you could
offer something constructive to the discussion?

Say, what you think the skills required for day-to-day work as a data
scientist are, and how you'd suggest someone develop them.

Perhaps also what you think the best approach is to credentialing your
learning--grooming a pedigree--if neither Kaggle nor a degree program are good
approaches.

~~~
achompas
Sure thing. Sorry for the previous terseness--I really really really hate this
whole "Coursera --> Kaggle --> DS job at Facebook" meme when it (rarely)
appears on HN, since it isn't even close to reality.

I'm not a data scientist, but I work with them very closely as an engineer and
I've considered going down the same path. When I talk about data scientists,
it's not a reference to any of the following:

> Engineers working with big data technology, like Hadoop, Storm, Kafka, who
> are essential but often uninvolved in model construction and evaluation.

> Analysts who develop models, then hand them off to engineers/IT to code them
> up (or keep them in Excel spreadsheets).

Instead, I'm thinking about someone with a specific background. They likely
have a PhD, since that's an excellent way to experience the "ask-explore-code-
test-present" workflow needed to answer an interesting question with real-
world implications. The strong academic background is not necessary, but it
greatly reduces friction during the research workflow (since you've spent 3-4
years in it). I'm getting a MS and working hard to make it as research-
oriented as possible, fwiw.

This person also has a strong foundation in applied math. They might have
worked on signal processing questions, applied algorithms for learning
Bayesian network structure to proteins, or thought about the transition from
Hopfield networks to RBNs or whatever awesome deep learning stuff is going on
nowadays. A guy I respect described this quality as that of "a traveler,"
someone who can understand advanced work in a number of disciplines in
addition to their specialty.

This person is an engineer. They learn languages easily, understand
algorithmic complexity and think about the complexity of their models. They
don't have to be Linus.

Finally, the person is forward-thinking. They understand that questions are
motivated by business needs, and that answering these questions can have
serious implications for the company or its partners. I should channel patio11
here!

Anyway I'm obviously very opinionated about this, but it's just one opinion.
I'm happy to discuss this more with anyone who's interested, though--contact
is in my profile.

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lynchdt
>> The program will cost $60,000, which school officials >> said compares
favorably with other professional degree >> programs. Entry-level data
scientists in the San >> Francisco area can command salaries in the $110,000
to >> $130,000 range.

$60,000 is laughable. The justification based on salaries in California is
laughable.

Unless a relocation package to California from anywhere there is internet is
included in the fee?

Even then......

~~~
fixxer
I read an article in WSJ on rent hikes in SF this morning. Yikes.

I grew up in SoCal and miss it terribly, but my cost of living in Chicago is a
tiny fraction of what it would be in SF _and_ my income isn't behind
California norms.

Maybe if I was 24 and looking for experience... I suppose you can apply the
same argument to finance in Manhattan.

------
graycat
Here's a problem with something like _data science_ :

First, the field is not _professional_ like law, medicine, or even some parts
of engineering. So, there's no licensing, _board certification_ , recognized
professional continuing education credits, professional job performance peer-
review, legal liability, etc. Instead, you can just say that you have a
Master's in _data science_ and know some programming, database, statistics,
etc.

Second, the degree isn't really a direct approach to business or
entrepreneurship. So, the degree is aimed at making a person an employee. This
means that somewhere there must be an employer including one ready to create a
job, recruit someone for that job, and pay $120,000+ a year for the person.

Now, just who is going to create this job, e.g., put it in their budget and
partly bet their career on it? And just why? I mean for what the program
taught in programming, database, statistics, something else? And where will
the real money actually come from, i.e., who with real P&L responsibility will
actually cough up the $120,000 a year plus benefits, office space, travel,
etc.? Or, let's think about the $120,000 a year: Ballpark, the full cost
stands to be twice that, $240,000 a year. After two years on the job, maybe
the person has actually delivered some value or is ready to start. So, the two
years is $480,000. Heck, guys, even in Silicon Valley, that's a large seed
round or a small Series A for a whole company and not just one employee slot!

I don't know but can ask: Are there some people at Berkeley smoking funny
stuff?

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hankcharles
Given the success of well run hacker schools like Dev Bootcamp and Flatiron
Schools, I am surprised no one has yet tried to apply that model to training
data scientists. It seems like a sector similarly deprived of properly trained
talent and also with a similar initial learning curve to develop the basic
skill set.

~~~
raj564
"theres a bootcamp for that"
[http://zipfianacademy.com/](http://zipfianacademy.com/)

~~~
lightcatcher
There's also [http://insightdatascience.com/](http://insightdatascience.com/)
. This is a little bit different; it's a program aimed at training postdocs in
various fields to be data scientists.

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mathattack
$60K seems like an awful lot for an on-line program. I think they are getting
a lot of internal flack over the pricing. It seems to me that Berkeley should
be jumping into on-line learning, as their state funding dries up. The best
way to do this consistent with their mission is a mass market approach. By
putting in Tiffany pricing, they're going to fail both their mission (training
data science, educating the public, etc) and they won't bring in much money to
fill any revenue holes.

Harvard's online masters degrees are closer to $20K all in.

------
jamo
Do not, do not, do not pay $60,000 for this. If 'data science' sounds
interesting, apply to a strong machine learning program.

~~~
achompas
This should be at the top of this thread. Save the $60k for a MS or PhD in
machine learning, applied math, or information systems at a graduate program.
Don't do this.

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Pinatubo
Did anyone else notice that about half of the faculty photos are of the person
leaning in from the side of the picture?

