In the end of April NES and Yandex announced the creation of the new joint educational program - "Economics and Data Science". The program is built for those who is looking to solve the problems of the edge of economics and data analysis. We asked NES Rector Ruben Enikolopov to tell more about those who will study this program and what are the job opportunities for its graduates.
How did the idea of creating the program “Economics and Data Science” appear?
We can see that in the labor market there is a high demand on specialists qualified in economics and data analysis, both in business and academic sector. There are very few such professionals, universities do not prepare them. Moreover, our graduates already work in that field. Despite the fact that they have to gain some knowledge in the machine learning sector on their own, the number of such graduates increase each year.
Has NES worked with Yandex previously?
Yes, we used to have joint projects, our students had internships and prepared various researches for Yandex. Sometimes it happened more actively, sometimes less. Now we institutionalized our relationship. We expect that cooperation with the company will not be limited only to the program “Economics and Data Science”, we will have joint research projects and closer cooperation in general.
What is your vision for the development of the program?
We definitely plan to expand the program - increase the number of students (this year we only take 10 students as a test). With time we also plan from the program of additional education turn "Economics and Data Science" into a master's program. To do this now, we are hampered only by the overregulation of this area - to obtain state accreditation will require high administrative costs. At first we want to understand how will the program work and then change the format. Regardless of the status of “Economics and Data Science”, we expect that students will receive this much-needed knowledge on this program that they will not have employment issues.
What applicants are you waiting for on this program? Who might be interested in it?
The are formal requirements to enter the program the applicants have to have knowledge of programming, mathematics and English. The language is crucial, because many courses at NES are taught in English. It turns out that the total requirements for "Economics and Data Science" applicants are higher than for those who are just entering the Yandex School of data analysis and for the Master of Economics program at NES.
In general, we would like to see those applicants who, on one hand, are ready for a rather in-depth study of machine learning methods, and on the other, they will be interested in a meaningful set of questions about data related to economics and finance.
What are the job opportunities for the graduates?
Nowadays this are is growing to fast that it is hard to tell where they will not be needed. Indeed, the highest demand on this type of specialists is in the business field. However, I can easily imagine our graduates in science too. In the academic field, research at the junction of economics and machine learning is now considered extremely promising.