Whether you are a prospective undergraduate that has just finished their school education, or you are an adult or postgraduate looking for further education or a change of career, it can be a daunting task choosing a degree – as it will dictate not only your immediate experiences while you complete the course, but also your future qualifications and the careers that will be available to you.
That’s why it’s always best to enroll in a course that you know you have a vested interest in, as degrees are huge undertakings that require substantial amounts of time, dedication, and effort, and the last thing anyone wants is for the degree to either be irrelevant to your eventual chosen career path, or too disinteresting for you to complete with the appropriate commitment.
There is a truly comprehensive range of further education courses available in the modern day, with students able to pursue essentially any subject area they can think of – and one course that is particularly popular, especially amongst those with an affinity to numbers, is data science.
With technology now an inescapable part of even the average citizen’s life, the capabilities of data collection are better than ever before, as computers are able to effectively log and store information in an efficient manner, and on large scales.
This means that data scientists are required to analyze and interpret that data and draw critically important conclusions from seemingly endless amounts of numbers and figures.
Read on to find out more about why a data science degree could be the one for you.
An industry in demand
As mentioned during the introduction, the data science industry is more important than ever before, and the skillsets of data scientists are sure to become increasingly valuable as more and more people and businesses take advantage of the insights to be drawn from data.
The amount of data being collected and consumed is exponentially growing, faster than the industry can keep up – meaning there is ample employment to be found as soon as you have graduated from your degree, as positions are currently going unfilled.
This also means there are great opportunities to move up in companies quickly once you have your foot in the door.
Great post-graduate pay
One of the advantages of enrolling in a data science course is the postgraduate pay. Due to the value of data scientist skillsets to society and business, and the exponentially growing nature of the industry, pay levels are extremely competitive when compared to other IT and science fields.
New graduates entering the workforce can expect pay rates of up to $35,000 per year, with clear progression to senior and, much later on, management positions that can bring in upwards of $100,000 a year.
Make an impact
Working in data science can have a real, measurable impact on people’s lives, not only in their day-to-day routines where machine learning techniques make things more convenient and more efficient but also in the healthcare sector where innovations through data science can help to save people’s lives.
For example, machine learning techniques can be used to better predict and detect serious illnesses such as tumors.