In the present world of information explosion, analytics has become an essential part of business. The number of organizations swearing by the power of data mining and analysis and data driven insights are supplementing experience and intuitions when it comes to decision making.

Need for analytics in education

The knowledge of analytics, what it means, how it works, and what it is capable of doing has become a necessary element for success at work place. This is the main reason why educational institutions are putting in huge effort to provide analytical knowledge to their participants.

The scenario in India

In India, Analytics has started off in huge way as the country becomes the stage for brilliance in the field. During the last decade, many of the leading companies such as Genpact, Inductis etc were hiring bachelors and masters in Statistics and Economics from institutes such as Indian Statistical Institute, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Calcutta University. As the requirement for qualified resources increased, they started to hire graduates, post graduates and PhDs from other disciplines such as mathematics, science, Engineering, and commerce. Now, they have even started to hire BBA graduates and MBA post graduates too.

Lack of trained professionals

Even though there are huge numbers of statisticians, Economics, and MBAs for the organizations to choose from, majority of them are not equipped with the skills that the organizations are looking for in an employee. As a result most the organizations spend valuable time, money and other resources in training the new recruits on the skills that are needed at the work place.

IBM has joined hands with higher education institutions

World renowned MNC IBM has decided to join hands with various universities across India and rest of the world to encourage the teaching of analytics. In addition to India, IBM has joined hands with China, Ireland and Scotland. The various initiatives under the programmes are intended to keep the students updated and help them acquire the necessary skills to meet the requirements of the employees.

Certification programmes to faculty members

In India IBM has joined hands with faculty members from about 500 universities to support more than 25000 participants to create and enhance skills in predictive analysis. As a part of the initiative, IBM will organize a series of training programmes with the cooperation of faculty from various management institutions in India focusing on predictive and business analytics, in 15 major cities across the nation. The faculty members will undergo a certification programme which will be completed at the end of the programme.

Certified faculty members will take classes

After the faculty members are certified, they will start to teach the participants on how to apply analytics on the topic of their study. The process of learning will consists of access to predictive analytics and will concentrate on how to perform on the results the analytics technology brings out.

Adoption of predictive analytics in India

According to Sahadeb Sarkar, professor, IIM Calcutta, he has employed IBM predictive analytics technology in various programmes at IIMC. It is expected that the initiative will help the faculty members in various institutions to learn and include analytics in existing courses and design new curricula that will help students obtain top notch education to meet the requirements of the present day businesses and government organizations.

Why analytics?

In the present information age, the total data generated by people each day amounts to 2.5 quintillion bytes. This data is generated from mobile devices, sensors, online transactions and also social networks. It is found that 90 per cent of the data has been produced in the past twenty four months alone. This huge amount of data cannot be put to use effectively by the organizations without using analytics. The initiatives taken up IBM has equipped the students and faculty members with latest software capabilities and thought process on how advanced analytics can be utilized to handle complex business and societal challenges.

The problem with understanding predictive analytics

In a study conducted by IBM and MIT Sloan Management review which covered 3,000 executives across the globe, it was observed that the biggest problem is the absence of proper understanding on how to make use of analytics to gain insights that will help to improve business outcomes. As the demand for analytics is increasing across the globe, universities and institutions have started to include analytics curricula and courseware into various degree programmes to educate college students in this emerging field.

The University of West Scotland has decided to launch different courses to its Schools of Computing curriculum. It includes data mining, BI and knowledge management. It is also planning to widen the analytics course offerings to non-IT and non-Finance students too.

Analytics education in India

Analytics education in India is limited to very few leading higher education institutions such as Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, IIM B and SJMSOM. The MBA College of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay too offers certificate or diploma courses in analytics. Most of the courses in analytics are for duration of one year and are either part time or full time. Even though these courses have a comprehensive curriculum, they are not completely designed to meet the needs of the present day market. These curriculums place too much importance on theory and very little importance on practical and real life business problems. It is generally accepted that 75 per cent of what is taught is not really required in business, but is most suited for research.

Small institution in India and their draw backs

In India there are many small institutes which offer various courses in analytics to bridge the gap between demand and supply in analytics. But the problem with such institutes is that they do not have a rich curriculum.

The high cost involved in purchasing analytic software is essentially a major problem that affects the analytics education. Universities in the west get access to such software at discounted rates, while those institutes in India are not eligible for such discounts.