IBM's Big Data Education OutreachIBM's Big Data Education Outreach

10 Cool Back-To-School Tech Tools

The scarcity of data scientists is a problem for platform and tools vendors like IBM.

Even with impressive improvements in data visualization tools such as dashboards, IBM's customers need employees able to set up these systems, correctly interpret their output and discuss it with business-side colleagues.

IBM and other technology companies themselves need new workers, trained in the latest data-science concepts and techniques. Like many of its customers, IBM is having trouble hiring enough data scientists.

For both of these reasons, IBM has been working closely with colleges and universities. Its educational partnerships now number more than 1,000 globally.

IBM offers "no-charge access to our solutions, case studies and curriculum consultation," Meredith Stowell, IBM's manager of academic initiative and skills, told informationin a phone interview. The program, launched in 2004, also offers the schools its employees as lecturers.

[ Three types of data scientist jobs depend on business and education joining forces. Read Big Data Education Hinges On Business, University Partnerships.

Earlier this month, IBM expandedits Academic Initiative by adding nine new schools to its 1000-plus roster of institutions around the world.

Although attention has focused on big data and analytics in the last few years, Stowell was quick to mention that IBM also supports other academic studies, such as software engineering and mobile and cloud computing.

What's interesting about the current attention on big data is how it has brought IBM into other parts of the campus.

"Typically, we worked with computer science programs, but with the advent of analytics and big data, we're getting into the business school," she said.

Back in 2010, for example, IBM and DePaul University joined forces to create the industry's first masters of science degree in predictive analytics, as part of the newly-created DePaul Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics. The applied research center is a joint venture involving faculty from the DePaul's School of Computing and the Department of Marketing.

Recently, the speed of these educational partnerships has increased, pointing to pent-up demand in the marketplace.

Take the University of Missouri, which launched its big-data course this month, in the fall term. According to Stowell, IBM started talking to MU engineering's computer science department about the course in January. Adjunct Susan Zeng, a data architect with IBM in Columbia and a Mizzou engineering alumnus, is teaching the course.

But at least one computer science professor whose school works closely with IBM said he wondered how deep IBM's heralded "1000-plus" partnerships really go.

"If they're just saying, 'Here, our software is free,' that's a limited partnership," the professor told information in a phone interview.

This teacher, who asked for anonymity, also worried that IT vendors might be "externalizing" their market competition into the school setting, trying to win or push out other vendors.

Noting that universities are complex ecosystems, with lots of platforms, applications and operating systems, this professor said, "It's not the kind of IT environment you have with an employer." Vendors need to respect this, and so offer cross-platform solutions and industry standards when working with schools, he said.

Michael Rappa, who works closely with industry as head of the Institute for Advanced Analytics, told information in an email that by reaching out to 1,000 universities, IBM had created a broader awareness among faculty about analytics and big data.

"Only time will tell whether or not its efforts will pay off," Rappa said. "Universities are notoriously slow to change. Our own success is built on a productive and sustained partnership (with SAS), which has been essential in moving the university as fast and as far as we've come today. It wouldn't have happened otherwise."

Reaching Undergrad Programs

Along with moving data analytics courses into the business schools, another recent trend is schools adding undergraduate degree programs in analytics, Stowell said.

"We're not only seeing graduate and master programs, we're starting to see it penetrate into undergraduate programs." These include minors, concentrations and majors, she said.

"We are going to continue to see need for big data and analytic skills and new business analytics degree programs," she said, adding, "But we're also going to see more data science degree programs. We need all those skills."

Lately, IBM's educational outreach has pushed into the K-12 sector.

For the past two summers, IBM and Southern Methodist University have joined to provide a summer school focused on big-data topics for high schoolers. The four-day program, the IBM Summer Innovation Camp on Predictive Analytics, was co-sponsored by the Richard B. Johnson Center for Economic Studies in SMU's Dedman College.

The big data market is not just about technologies and platforms -- it's about creating new opportunities and solving problems. The Big Data Conference provides three days of comprehensive content for business and technology professionals seeking to capitalize on the boom in data volume, variety and velocity. The Big Data Conference happens in Chicago, Oct. 22-23.