MIT's Sloan School of Management will launch a Master of Business Analytics program this year, the school has announced.
The new program, which is offered in partnership with MIT's Operations Research Center (ORC) will help students apply data science tools to solve business problems.
"In the Era of Big Data, the demand for skilled practitioners who understand how to mine and analyze the vast amount of digital data that's being created is a well-known challenge," says David Schmittlein, Sloan's dean.
Indeed, the sheer amount of data available—in industries like finance, marketing, and healthcare—means that there's a demand for those who can make sense of all those ones and zeros. A recent McKinsey reports suggest that by 2018, the US will experience a shortage of some 190,000 data scientists and 1.5 million manager who have analytical skills.
MIT's new Master of Business Analytics program will take 12 months to complete. Program curriculum will touch on a wide variety of topics, from applied probability to data mining and software tools. The program will also include a summer capstone project, which will give students the opportunity to work on real-world data science problems.
The capstone project "gives students an opportunity to get out in the field—with a lot of faculty mentoring and support—and apply the very deep technical knowledge they've learned in the classroom to solve a real world challenge," says John Hauser, who teaches marketing at Sloan.
MIT - Sloan is the latest of a string of US business school that have launched master's-level programs in analytics. Just this year alone, Syracuse's Whitman School of Management, Wake Forest University School of Business and Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business have all announced the launch of similar programs.
To apply for the Sloan program, potential candidates should have at least a bachelor's degree. Interested candidates should also have strong mathematical, computer science, or statistical backgrounds. A GMAT or GRE score is also required.
The program will launch in September and applications close on April 15, 2016.
For more information, please MIT - Sloan's Master of Business Analytics program webpage.
See FIND MBA's Top list of best b-schools for analytics.
