Assessing the Alignment of Philippine Higher Education with the Emerging Demands for Data Science and Analytics Workforce ; PIDS: Discussion Paper Series ; No 2019-34.

Autor/Urheber	Brenda A. Quismorio; Maria Antonette D. Pasquin; Claire S. Tayco
Titel	Assessing the Alignment of Philippine Higher Education with the Emerging Demands for Data Science and Analytics Workforce ; PIDS: Discussion Paper Series ; No 2019-34.
Quelle	Philippine Institute for Development Studies (2019) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Examinations; Higher education institutions; Free education; Educational policy; Project finance; Technology assessment; Aid evaluation; Economic evaluation; Cost benefit analysis; Public Education; Parent Education; Equity In Education; Educational Policies; Quality Education; Seminar; Tertiary Education; Books; Skills Development; Management Development; Vocational Education; Higher Education Costs; Educational Testing; Educational Surveys; Public Policy Evaluation; Program Evaluation; Evaluation Criteria; Out of school education; Alternative education; Educational planning; Educational aspects; Access to books; Objective tests; Educational tests and measurements; College preparation programs; College dropouts; Discrimination in higher education; Universities and colleges; Educational accountability; Scholarships; Prediction of dropout behavior; Self-evaluation; Participatory monitoring and evaluation; Educational evaluation; Cost effectiveness; Tutors and tutoring; Educational change; Educational innovations; Total quality management in education; Homebound instruction; Training; Occupational retraining; Driver education
Abstract	Rapid advancement in technology has allowed for far-reaching use of data. This has consequently led to an increasing demand for Data Science and Analytics (DSA) professionals. However, recent studies show that such demand is often not met in many economies. Such DSA skills shortage is claimed to be rooted in the mismatch between the skills the industry demands and the skills academic institutions supply. This mismatch is evident in the Philippines where studies also reveal certain difficulties of current Philippine education and training to meet the level of competencies required to do high-skilled jobs. An indicator of this weak point is the persistent high youth unemployment and underemployment rate in the Philippines where graduates land jobs which their completed education did not intend for them. As the first step in addressing this shortage of industry-ready DSA workers, it is necessary to know the DSA skills demanded by the industry and the DSA skills with which academic institutions equip their students. To do this, the study employed the Analytics Association of the Philippines' (AAP) Professional Maturity Model, which is based on the ten APEC-recommended DSA competencies, as analytical framework. It estimated the current availability of DSA competencies using available data from the Labor Force Survey (LFS) and interviews with companies engaged in analytics activities. Meanwhile, the profiling into four DSA job roles (Data Steward, Data Engineer, Data Scientist and Functional Analyst) of these workers was done with the use of relevant data from online job postings. On the other hand, the current supply for DSA job roles were mainly determined from survey interviews of analytics practitioners and undergraduate program administrators and CHED's databases. Findings showed that in terms of the demand-side, the Functional Analyst job role emerges as the most sought role of employers among the four DSA- related job roles. The demand for these DSA-roles also mostly come from the Information and Communication industry group under the Services sector. For each demanded job role, the employers' require differing DSA competencies and levels of proficiency. The findings also revealed that one challenge for employers in hiring DSA talents is the inadequate 21st century skills more than other technical skills. With regard to the supply-side, top ten undergraduate programs were identified to be DSA – related programs based on the common degrees of current analytics practitioners. The extent to which these DSA-related programs prepare their respective graduates with the basic proficiency of each competency varies. However, the curricula assessments reveal that these degree programs mostly equip their graduates with data engineering and statistical techniques competencies and correspondingly enable them to perform the Data Engineer job role. With these results, the study evinced a misalignment between the demand and supply of the DSA workforce in the country. Specifically, there are DSA competencies – both sought by employers and required by the analytical framework of the study – that are poorly supplied by these DSA-related undergraduate programs. Moreover, while employers mostly look for Functional Analysts, most of the graduates of the degree programs are enabled to perform the Data Engineer job role. Because of these findings, the study offers two main recommendations. First, it recommends the use of the AAP Professional Maturity Model to define the DSA profession. To allow the growth and maturity of the still an emerging analytics industry, there is a need to address the current lack of a common definition of the analytics profession among stakeholders. Having a common understanding can facilitate efforts to align supply and demand and eventually the maturity of the industry. With the first recommendation as starting point, the study further endorses the promotion of government-industry-academe linkages to expand the existing market for DSA workforce in the country.
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