University of the Philippines equips statistics grads with complete SAS skills and training

The University of the Philippines (UP), the country's state university, has contributed to the local workforce a new set of SAS-skilled graduates after jointly running an intensive three-week training program with SAS Philippines, the leader in business intelligence software and services.

Fourteen out of the 17 participants in the training program are now currently employed by top corporations and SAS user companies in the financial services, manufacturing and IT sectors in the country. The remaining three are awaiting results from one of the nation's leading banking institutions.

Held at the UP Diliman campus in Quezon City, the training sessions were attended by 17 graduates from UP's School of Statistics and covered topics on SAS programming, statistics, SQL processing and predictive modeling. The SAS Bootcamp – as the training program is called – is part of SAS' "Bridge Academia to Business" Academic Program, and aims to equip university graduates with complete SAS training and to build a resource pool of SAS-skilled programmers and professionals.

"Through the SAS Bootcamp, our graduates have been able to support SAS user companies and other organizations immediately upon employment, thus increasing their own career opportunities and obtaining preferred referral for employment in SAS user companies," said Dr. Lisa Grace Bersales, Dean of the School of Statistics, University of the Philippines. "Based on experience, SAS is the software to be used for any statistical computing needed in real business environments."

SAS is taught extensively at the university's School of Statistics in courses such as Statistical Programming, Categorical Data Analysis, Multivariate Analysis and Regression Analysis. Integrating what they have learnt in school and in the SAS Bootcamp, the training participants have now gained expertise in SAS Programming I & II, SQL Processing Using SAS, and in applying data mining techniques using SAS Enterprise Miner. SAS also provides the same training program to its clientele and graduates of other leading universities in the Philippines, with SAS-certified instructors conducting such training.

"Organizations now look for employees with the right analytical and communication skills who can solve problems analytically and relay such information effectively. SAS has allowed our students to acquire a competitive edge in the workplace and provide what these organizations need," said Dr. Bersales.

Sponsored by leading telecommunications provider Globe Telecom, the SAS Bootcamp training program selected participants based on individual grade weighted average, recommendations from the dean and their SAS professors, and results from their interviews with SAS Philippines.

Copyright © SAS Institute Inc. All Rights Reserved.