Data scientists are a rare commodity in today’s job market, and this is not expected to change anytime soon. In a recently published study, the McKinsey Global Institute predicted that demand for professionals with Big Data know-how will continue to exceed supply for the foreseeable future.

“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,” the report states.

See here for 11 universities to study Data Science

Leading Hadoop distributor Cloudera is hoping to address this widening knowledge gap by doubling down with academia.  The vendor just announced that it is launching the Cloudera Academic Partnership, a program meant to help universities equip students with the skills necessary to accelerate the “new Big Data economy”.  The first seven higher education institutions that signed up for CAP are:

●      Auburn University

●      California State University, Los Angeles

●      Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center at Harvard University

●      Purdue University

●      San Jose State University

●      Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

●      The University of Stavanger, Norway

These institutions join nearly a dozen U.S campuses that already offer degrees and certifications in data science. A sizable portion of these universities were brought on board by other Big Data vendors that are also targeting aspiring data scientists – namely IBM.

Big Blue has launched several academic initiatives over the past few years, including a web-based program that offers Hadoop courses and tutorialsfor free.  Anjul Bhambhri, IBM’s vice president of Big Data, alsocreated an educational web series  for the company’s network of over 200 colleges and universities.