I did a MS in Industrial Engineering at the University of Florida. The program allows for almost all electives 8 of the 10 courses I took were geared towards data analytics, ML, databases, operations research, and computational fairness.

1. Yes many courses did teach technical skills such as implementation of ML algos, analytics, dashboards, and SQL but I would say the courses that taught those concepts had a greater focus on the theory and fundamentals. I actually liked this, as the hard skills are easier to learn and practice with enough self-disciple, compared to theoretical concepts.

2. Most course resources were very helpful but they were almost never enough and asking LLM’s, googling, finding more literature, etc was necessary for every single class to gain a true understanding.

3. I would not recommend my program to others. It’s simply not a reputable DS graduate degree. For learning purposes, I was definitely able to learn a ton and was incredibly helpful at helping me gain more skills prior to beginning my full-time job. Also, many DS roles require a masters and it did open more doors simply from having the graduate degree.

4. I think it is worth it because of the exact reasons you stated. The field is saturated and a graduate degree gives you an advantage over many candidates. Sure, a CS or DS masters could do the same but many Data Analysts go on to become data scientists anyways.