Nurturing High Quality Analytic Talent for an Analytics-based Society

In today’s digital information age, data is of the utmost importance when making business decisions and sustaining competitiveness. With the unprecedented rapid growth in volume of business data, the demand for analytics is also rising. This in turn drives the need for talent with the professional data analytics skills to use new technologies to process, analyze, interpret and transform data into valuable insights.

Starting from 1999, The School of Professional Education and Executive Development (SPEED) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has offered a quality, professionally-oriented top-up honours degree program in full-time and part-time study modes to address individual advancement and socio-economic needs. In order to nurture highly skilled, top quality analytics talent to address the burgeoning needs in the business world, PolyU SPEED is committed to refining its Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Applied Sciences (Statistics and Data Science) program by incorporating SAS’s analytic tools and services for teaching. This articulation degree program, designed for graduates who have completed the Higher Diploma and Associate Degree in information technology, statistics, and business, marketing and computer science, features compulsory Work-Integrated Education (WIE) to equip students with work-based learning experience.

Dr. Kelvin Lo, Award Leader of the Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Applied Sciences (Statistics and Data Science), says, “In the past, students could only work in government departments and the commercial sector to gain practical skills and experience in data management and data analytics, and such student internship opportunity was limited. With the deployment of SAS tools, students are able to develop their data analysis skills throughout their academic years. As a longtime supporter of educational institutes, SAS, with its deployment of SAS tools in the program, offers a great opportunity for students to further enhance their analytic abilities and cultivate their career aspirations in business analytics and data mining.”

Addressing Industry Demands

With the extensive adoption of SAS analytics tools and solutions in different industries and sectors in Hong Kong, such as banking and finance, telecommunications, marketing, tourism and government, competence in SAS tools will give graduates a competitive edge in pursuing their careers in data science-related fields, and at the same time, encourage and pave their way for future enrolment in the widely-recognized SAS^® Global Certification Program to further improve their professional knowledge and expertise in analytics.

In view of this, PolyU SPEED installed a comprehensive range of SAS’s proven analytics tools, including Education Analytical Suite, Base SAS^® , SAS Enterprise^® Guide^® and SAS^® Enterprise Miner™, among others, in their computer laboratories. These facilitate smooth teaching and effective learning of the practical use of the tools in the business world, ranging from data management and advanced analytics to business intelligence and visualization.

Providing All-round Support

SAS also provides comprehensive educational support for the faculty and the students, which includes teaching materials and evaluation copies, mock examinations for the SAS^® Global Certification Program, on-campus examinations, free access to SAS^® University Edition software and e-learning for self-study. In particular, the up-to-date teaching materials with real-world applications facilitate a more effective learning process for the students and offer better understanding of real-life applications of analytics. With the SAS^® University Edition and e-learning courses, students can also learn and practice data analytics knowledge and skills without boundaries, anywhere, anytime.

Looking to the Future

Moving forward, with the growing importance of data analytics and the demand for qualified talent in the business world, PolyU SPEED will continue to drive the development of high quality local analytics talent with the support of SAS’s best-of-breed technologies and solutions, as well as its commitment in transferring advanced data analytics knowledge and skills to the next generation.

“Business analytics and data mining are essential to creating an effective, customizable, relevant and smart digital economy, and thus analytics talent has become vital to our future,” says Dr. Lo. “We are very pleased to share the same vision with SAS in nurturing next-generation analytic talent, and greatly appreciate SAS Hong Kong’s support in refining our related teaching and learning. We also believe that the deployment of SAS analytics tools is the most practical and effective way to enrich our students’ professional skills and knowledge to meet tomorrow’s needs and challenges in this data-driven business world.”