Whether it’s helping to streamline your resources, save vital cash, or gain insights to your customer market, being able to prepare and visualize data is increasingly important when it comes to pushing a business forward.
Big data analytics is also one of the hardest skills to recruit for employers, so much so that 13% of companies rated the skill as ‘impossible’ to hire in 2018’s Financial Times Skills Gap Survey .
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management’s Master in Applied Data Science was developed in response to that demand.
In the two-year program, students cover both business fundamentals and explore hot topics like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Students get to solve real-world data science problems, working on company projects with the school’s big-name corporate partners, including Commerzbank and PwC.
The program follows a unique 3-day model, with students attending class three days a week—on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays—leaving time for part-time work and study.
Diverse Experience
German student Loa Marx joined the course after completing a bachelor’s in business informatics, where she discovered a love for stats and data. She subsequently decided to move towards data science in her master’s.
For Loa, the master’s provided the perfect opportunity to build up her knowledge in statistical methods despite her not coming from a purely data background. Instead, the program attracts people from a range of academic and global backgrounds.
“It is incredibly enhancing, there is a lot to learn from different types of people” she explains.
Students studying applied data science at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management have experience in a range of subjects such as linguistics, marketing and engineering. Over half of the students on Loa’s course are international.
Students get diverse experiences too: with many of their classes being held in Frankfurt School’s new artificial intelligence lab, lectures on the ethical considerations around Industry 4.0, hackathons, and business games. While the program is taught entirely in English, German classes are provided for all non-German speakers.
Following her degree, Loa hopes to go in to the business analytics field, using her knowledge in data, technology and business to eventually move on to a management position.
“You learn to make data-based decisions and that’s a great starting point to pursue a management career,” Loa explains. “Frankfurt is ahead of other business schools in this field.”
Big data revolution!
Fellow student, Felix Schmid, agrees. Felix, who studied engineering and management at undergrad, wanted to study data science to stay at the cutting-edge of business.
The big data industry in Germany is growing rapidly, with sales of hardware, software and services in big data growing to approximately €6.8 billion in 2018, up by 10% on the previous year. Such statistics are echoed across the world as big data becomes increasingly vital.
‘‘I felt that the technical side and those big data insights will really drive the economy in the future and that’s why I decided to go for data science master,” Felix explains.
As well as the training in big data analytics, Felix has been inspired by the community and professional network he’s developed at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Students at Frankfurt learn from experienced innovators who have previous business experience, meaning they are able to provide industry insights as well as academic.
“We are a small class and you can always talk to the lecturers so you get a lot of knowledge about their experiences,” he says.
Vahe Andronians, a professor on the course, explains that the MSc in Applied Data Science was created as a response to the demand for business savvy data scientists, with the artificial intelligence labs forming a key part of that.
"It provides a space where new learning concepts can be developed, tested and immediately implemented in to the teaching programme," he explains. The labs subsequently provide space for experimentation and creativity when working.
"Students will learn the foundations of Artificial Intelligence which will allow them to stay on top of an increasingly faster evolving industry."
Student Reviews
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
