Data Science comparison at UCB, UCLA and UCSD

[PerePan]

UC Berkeley is moving in the direction of bringing everything in computing, information and data under one college.

There’s another page that has a lot of information about the data science programs across different UC campuses:

University of California Overview (2021 Data) | CDSS at UC Berkeley

[UniFan]

How did you find this data? Can you share the link please

[ucscuuw]

See here → Where Do Cal Grads Go? - Career Engagement

[lkg4answers]

Looks like Berkeley’s data is from Handshake. I would take anything published by Handshake with a grain of salt.

[ucscuuw]

Handshake is just hosting the survey. This is the official First Destination Survey results published by the career center. From what I know of recent DS grads, it tracks quite well.

[acerodent]

Here’s an article from the Harvard Data Science Review written by a UC Berkeley professor, Data Science and Computing at UC Berkeley · Issue 3.2, Spring 2021. Here’s an excerpt:
“The data science major is the fastest growing major in the history of Berkeley; only three years into the major, we will be graduating over 700 seniors this spring. Data science is also important for a general education. Over 6,000 UC Berkeley students take a data science course each year, including over 3,000 annually who take our rigorous introductory course, Data 8. Our data science education curriculum is now being used at numerous universities throughout the world. Indeed, hundreds of colleges and universities participate each year in our annual Data Science Education Workshop. Our curriculum is used widely by both public and private colleges and universities, and by community colleges.”

There are also Data Science connector courses offered by Berkeley. Here’s another article from the same Harvard publication Data Science as a Foundation for Inclusive Learning · Issue 1.2, Fall 2019. Here’s an excerpt:
“Take the University of California at Berkeley Data Science Connector Course model, for example, where students beginning data science coursework can concurrently pursue their interests in numerous other fields through allied connector courses—in fact, they are strongly encouraged to do so. Since the fall of 2015, there have been connector courses offered at the intersections of data science and civil engineering, cognitive science, computer science, demography, earth science, environmental science, ecology, geography, history, legal studies, molecular/cellular biology, statistics, and general liberal arts. It is noteworthy that some of these cross-connecting courses are traditionally characterized by overrepresentations of women and minorities. This signals that connectors can be used by women and minorities to gain access to the approaches of statistics and computer science under the auspices of application to issues drawn from another field.”

I would say go with Cal.

[Mwfan1921]

It’s not clear to me what time frame/graduating class that first destination survey is from. I see the locations map is only Class of 2022, but no other section is labeled. If this is Class of 2022 data, and 28% (overall, not major specific) are still looking for jobs that is…concerning.

The survey also says the knowledge rate is 47.1%, so less than 1/2 the students have participated, whatever the timeframe is. Not to mention surveys like this can be unreliable, because it’s self reported data, and well, people aren’t always truthful.

[ucscuuw]

All of those are reasonable points but they are NOT unique to this specific DS data, or Cal, or even any university’s career survey. For instance, the UCLA career center data is old (has only 2019 data), had a lower survey response rate (33%) and a lower % employed (46%).

Further, for 2022, the Cal % looking for DS is around 26% which is not a huge surprise given that in most schools there is always a bottom quartile that will have a harder time than the rest of the class. And I suspect, many of those won’t bother to update the survey once they’ve found employment.

I wish we had UCLA and UCSD DS data but unfortunately both those schools are less transparent with their outcomes and that’s why I recommended to the OP that they talk to the career center and students there to better understand the opportunities or the lack there of.