Education: UC Berkeley’s I School Launches Country’s First Fully Online Master of Information and Data Science Program

From the UC Berkeley I School Announcement:

“This new degree program is in response to a dramatically growing need for professionals who can organize, analyze and interpret the deluge of often messy and unorganized data available from the web, sensor networks, mobile devices and elsewhere,” said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the I School.
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The rigorous new 27-unit MIDS program officially begins in January 2014. Aimed at the working professional, the program will be offered online —  except for a required, one-week immersion program at the I School’s home at South Hall, to meet in person and explore the Bay Area tech environment.
Students will interact with professors and other students via the web. They will be expected to attend small, weekly face-to-face classes with a student-to-faculty ratio of no more than 15:1, and the coursework will include lectures, interactive case studies, and collaborative assignments. Classes will use 2U Inc.’s online platform that features high-quality video and a state-of-the-art learning management system.
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The I School faculty designed the curriculum and they will teach alongside experienced data science professionals. Classes will range from an introduction to machine learning — the intersection of computer science and statistics that focuses on finding patterns in data — and how to store and retrieve data, to experimenting with big data and the privacy, security and ethics of data.
The program will cost $60,000, which school officials said compares favorably with other professional degree programs. Entry-level data scientists in the San Francisco area can command salaries in the $110,000 to $130,000 range.

Read the Complete Announcement
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