Have Florida Universities Failed Data Science Hopefuls?

At the time of this writing I'm currently going through university myself, attempting to pivot into data science after a lengthy career as a tax accountant. Knowing the competition would be fierce to do so, I decided to start seeking out different opportunities to showcase my abilities, and came to three potentials:

1) I could try for a coding bootcamp - although when or if I got hired after said bootcamp or even if it would be valued remained ambiguous

2) For the same cost of a bootcamp, I could transfer my credits and take data science courses at a florida university

3) I could try the self-learn route, and hope that eventually my portfolio would be enough to impress a hiring manager

Ultimately I decided on number 2, which has lead me down a rabbit hole of figuring out "Ok, if I'm going to spend at least $10,000 or more on another degree... I want to get the best bang for my buck", which left out attempting to get a masters and instead focused on Bachelor degrees.

This lead me to four different universities to look into:

1) University of Florida (https://catalog.ufl.edu/UGRD/colleges-schools/UGLAS/DAT_BS/)

2) University of South Florida (https://catalog.usf.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=13&poid=6023)

3) University of Central Florida (https://www.ucf.edu/degree/data-science-bs/)

And 4) Florida Polytechnic (http://catalog.floridapoly.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=26&poid=1118)

As any good aspiring data scientist, I decided to go ahead and look into creating my own little data vis tool to help narrow down what it was these colleges were offering, and make my decision then:

I ended up listing 7 different categories that a class could fit into (Statistics, Math, Computer Science, Ethics, “other”, Data visualization and capstone). And I’d just like to point out that “other” was only added for things like intro classes or comms classes in excess of what is needed for a standard bachelor’s degree.

So I got to work categorizing all the mandatory classes needed for a bachelor’s in each respective school AND….

... lead me to being vastly underwhelmed by supposedly the top public universities.

Looking first at the university I graduated from for accounting -

University of South Florida

Compared to the other 3 colleges I looked at, they somehow managed to come last in all but 2 categories – “Other” and capstone.

Honestly, I thought maybe I was just wrong, but no, USF’s bachlors of data science sees far more value in giving you intro courses to the topic you’re studying, rather than giving you a good foundation of an aspiring data scientist. Here’s a list of those 6 courses that USF has that you are required to take to graduate with said degree:

Interaction design I could *maybe* see as a data visualization class, but there was no description on USF’s site to even look into what it would be about. As for the rest, I don’t see how a intro to information science is what employers are looking for when someone claims they have a data science degree. Infact, for what they charge, those classes should be on BOGO.

Total Cost: $25,200

Ugh. Moving on… Lets try

University of Central Florida

And right off the bat, we see where UCF focused their attention – in strong math skills (both statistics and calculus). That to me is a fantastic start, after all – data science is just the modern term of a statistician that has computer science skills.

From here, I may have a bit more of a controversial take, but as fantastic as it is that a lot of time and effort is spent teaching statistics, I feel UCF let down their students by being light on the computer science courses – only 3 are required for graduation (pictured below). And the two required “other” courses? Courses titled “Data science 1 & 2”. C’mon UCF, what is it that I’m actually taking? Those sound more like intro courses. For a college known for a strong computer science department, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial.

At least they do maintain a capstone project for you to have the opportunity to condense what you’ve learned into one major project. Plus, they are one of the few colleges that actually has a data viz class as a requirement for graduation.

Total Cost: $25,800

Ok… Lets try the home of the swamp,

University of Florida

University of Florida is by far the most well known school for engineering… but unfortunately the same cannot be said for their computer science department which was the home to a lot of political infighting (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/apr/24/forbes-blog/university-florida-eliminates-computer-science-dep/) While I personally haven’t kept up in recent years, I decided to reserve judgement until after I’ve seen their data science offering

And oo boy, well I’ll give UF props, unlike UCF, they at least have a much stronger computer science offering on the surface, and they still maintain their statistics and math requirements which are a big bonus. But they also gutted any kind of data viz or capstone classes – and instead made an ethics course a requirement.

Looking more closely into the computer science courses we see “programing fundaments 1 &2”, which UF states is for OOP (no word on if that means you’re working with C++ or python, but I would hope it’s the latter).

More impressively, they also are the first university that has learning in statistics and programming in R, a fantastic language for managing large datasets.

Total Cost: $25,560

Finally…

Florida Polytechnic

Polytechnic, unlike the other universities we’ve seen, took a different approach to their program. Instead of starting with a statistics major and replacing some math for computer science courses, Polytech did the opposite. What that leaves us with a very heavy CS program, with a modest amount of statistics classes.

My major gripe with their program however, is the 7 total classes I had to label as “other”:

Easily half of these could be replaced with more advanced statistics courses, or better yet, try to offer some kind of data viz class and lean more into computer science by offering R programming classes

Better yet, if you are already starting with computer science, lean into data engineering. I would argue that a data scientist that has a minor in data engineering could be seen as much more valuable than one who is strictly a statistician.

Total Cost: $20,400

Conclusion

Honestly, I’m disenchanted. Of the supposedly top 4 colleges offering data science degrees in the undergrad level, Only 2 of them offer any kind of data visualization course, 1 of them doesn’t offer a capstone and by far and away the vast majority fail to offer a substantial amount of computer science for their degrees.

Ultimately, my decision is to go to Polytechnic University. While they dont offer as strong of a stats program compared to UF or UCF, the fact that they more than make up for it with a strong computer science background is much appreciated. But understanding now where the weaknesses of their program lies, shows me more importantly where I need to do my own self-study and learning (namely, R and statistics) to ensure I’m the best damn data guy.