Houston Chronicle

By Andrea Leinfelder

July 12, 2018

Rice University is providing an express lane for data analysis jobs and their potential $60,000-plus salary.

The Houston campus is taking the coding boot camp model, popularized in recent years for its quick cultivation of web developers, and adapting it to big data analysis. The program meets a need for local employers that struggled to fill more than 50,000 positions requiring data proficiency in the past year.

Local data analysts make an average of $62,118 a year. Data scientists average $105,726, according to Glassdoor.

Boot camps got their start because of an educational gap. Universities were providing a big-picture, expansive education with a strong base of critical thinking. But they didn’t always provide the precise skills needed to land a coding job, experts said.

The schools weren’t in tune with employers’ needs and couldn’t keep up with rapidly changing technology. It can take years to get a new program accredited, and the evolution of technology sometimes outpaced that.

“Where there is a clear shortage for workers and a clear market demand where traditional higher ed can’t keep up, the boot camps are trying to move quickly to fill that need,” said Michael Horn, chief strategy officer for Entangled Group, a venture education technology studio that incubates new education companies.