IBM Solidifies Academic Analytics Investments

As their own detailed

A report out of India this week indicated that Big Blue is firming up its investments at a number of academic institutions worldwide in the hopes of readying a new generation of analytics graduates. This effort springs from the company’s Academic Initiative, which is the IBM-led effort to partner with universities to extend the capabilities of institutions to provide functional IT training and research opportunities.

China, India, Scotland and Ireland are among sites chosen for this angle in the expansion of the company’s broader Academic Initiative. In India, for example, IBM is working with faculty across 500 universities to churn out an anticipated 30,000 students with educational backgrounds in predictive analytics. The program in India will create a certification regiment that will allow students to apply their understanding of predictive analytics to their diverse areas of study.

Via the IBM program, institutions like the University of West Scotland are introducing new courses under the leadership of the computer science department that teach valuable concepts and skills around data mining, BI and data management. The university is looking to extend the analytics focus to non-computer science students and those not in related divisions, including finance.

A similar effort is taking shape at Xi’an Jiao Tong University in China where collaboration between the school and IBM’s China Development Lab in the city has created a business analytics curriculum, complete with proposed training and technical materials. These have an obvious IBM slant, focusing directly on Cognos as well as SPSS.

According to Sahadeb Sarkar from the Operations Management Group at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, predictive analytics can be applied to a number of existing programs within the school of management. He told the Indian newswire service, India Infoline, that he hopes “this initiative will help teachers in universities to learn and include analytics in existing courses and design new curriculum that will help students gain top-notch education to meet the demands of today’s business and government organizations.”

While it might sound like IBM is ignoring the need for efforts on its home turf, it’s worth noting that the company has already made a few key investments in universities with strong enterprise-geared analytics programs, including the Yale School of Management, USC, and Northwestern University, among others.

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