UMD business school to launch ‘big data’ master’s degree program in 2013

In the tech world, “big data” is the new black. If you can use numbers to help win a presidential election, come up with solutions to some of cities’ seemingly intractable problems or build smarter custom apps for clients, you’re going places.
With this in mind, the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland is introducing a master’s program in marketing analytics starting in 2013. According to a press release, the new program “will equip its graduates to harness and process massive amounts of data to help design products, predict the effects of marketing campaigns and better understand customers.”

A program like this couldn’t come at a better time. A May 2011 McKinsey report on big data, which McKinsey calls “the next frontier of innovation,” identifies five ways in which using data will make improved “decision-making” and “more precisely tailored products or services.” Even more, a shortage of big-data specialists is on the horizon:

There will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions. [more]

“Our program will provide a hands-on knowledge of the quantitative models needed to analyze the massive stores of customer and marketing data inundating companies today,” said Wendy Moe, Smith marketing professor and director of the new master’s program.