Is Our Education System Gearing Up For the Big Data Boom?
The explosion of Big Data and the impact it has created on the businesses—big or small has rattled every one resulting in awe and amazement in some quarters and uncertainty and realisation of lack of readiness in some others. Whatever may be the nature of current response and readiness, one thing everyone is agreed upon is the inevitability of having to build capabilities to embrace this new phenomenon and take advantage of it rather than getting left behind.
According to IDC estimates the size of the ‘digital universe’ was around 130 exabytes about ten years back, which grew to 1,227 exabytes by 2010 and by 2015 it is expected to become 7,910 exabytes. What is unique about this data growth is that more than 90% of the data has got created in just last two years. With more and more sophisticated tools and methods being made available to extract as well as analyse data from customer interactions, emails, web browsing, social networks and machine sensors and a variety of new device options continuing to be made available enabling more and more web transactions, the data deluge is expected to impact every aspect of the economy. No business or for that matter even not for profit businesses can ignore the significance of Big Data. However, there is a yawning gap in terms of capabilities that businesses possess to take full advantage of the opportunities emanating from their web presence.
While intuition will always play an important role in decision making, ignoring data that could be tapped and made use of would lead to sub optimal decision making. This approach has to be inculcated with employees across the board. This leads us to the question of how is our education system getting geared to produce talent which is equipped with skills to think and act around the use of Big Data.
Building the talent pool for Big Data and analytics requires a blend of mass and customised approach. The mass training and orientation should be planned at high school and undergraduate levels. Customised or advanced techniques and curriculum could be introduced as part of the post graduate studies. Hence interventions should be planned in select schools, develop the proof of concept and train the teachers to tune their minds to the eventual areas where their students are expected to be contributing.
Once the system is ready to take off, it may also be worthwhile to consider setting up special schools for high school education with the objective of nurturing multi-disciplinary approach to teaching and lay a strong foundation for exploring the new frontiers of computing power leading to careers in research, applications and product development. The pre-eminence of the Indian businesses in the global knowledge services driven by Big Data and analytics is possible to be realised when we are able to create entry barriers for other countries and therefore we need innovation and the will power to have a radically different approach to education, skilling and talent pool development.
The explosion of Big Data and the impact it has created on the businesses—big or small has rattled every one resulting in awe and amazement in some quarters and uncertainty and realisation of lack of readiness in some others. Whatever may be the nature of current response and readiness, one thing everyone is agreed upon is the inevitability of having to build capabilities to embrace this new phenomenon and take advantage of it rather than getting left behind.
According to IDC estimates the size of the ‘digital universe’ was around 130 exabytes about ten years back, which grew to 1,227 exabytes by 2010 and by 2015 it is expected to become 7,910 exabytes. What is unique about this data growth is that more than 90% of the data has got created in just last two years. With more and more sophisticated tools and methods being made available to extract as well as analyse data from customer interactions, emails, web browsing, social networks and machine sensors and a variety of new device options continuing to be made available enabling more and more web transactions, the data deluge is expected to impact every aspect of the economy. No business or for that matter even not for profit businesses can ignore the significance of Big Data. However, there is a yawning gap in terms of capabilities that businesses possess to take full advantage of the opportunities emanating from their web presence.
While intuition will always play an important role in decision making, ignoring data that could be tapped and made use of would lead to sub optimal decision making. This approach has to be inculcated with employees across the board. This leads us to the question of how is our education system getting geared to produce talent which is equipped with skills to think and act around the use of Big Data.
Building the talent pool for Big Data and analytics requires a blend of mass and customised approach. The mass training and orientation should be planned at high school and undergraduate levels. Customised or advanced techniques and curriculum could be introduced as part of the post graduate studies. Hence interventions should be planned in select schools, develop the proof of concept and train the teachers to tune their minds to the eventual areas where their students are expected to be contributing.
Once the system is ready to take off, it may also be worthwhile to consider setting up special schools for high school education with the objective of nurturing multi-disciplinary approach to teaching and lay a strong foundation for exploring the new frontiers of computing power leading to careers in research, applications and product development. The pre-eminence of the Indian businesses in the global knowledge services driven by Big Data and analytics is possible to be realised when we are able to create entry barriers for other countries and therefore we need innovation and the will power to have a radically different approach to education, skilling and talent pool development.
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