Master of Professional Studies in Data Analytics

Learn to design, implement, and apply data management techniques with Penn State's 30-credit online Master of Professional Studies in Data Analytics degree. This fully online program helps professionals acquire the technical expertise and analytical skills to help them uncover and leverage large data sets to efficiently make informed decisions that may increase productivity and profits, expand organizational offerings, better define competitive advantage, and more.  

Learning Outcomes

As a student, you can:

• learn how to frame analytics problems, identify data sources, determine analytics methodologies, and design and deploy analytics systems at scale
• demonstrate fundamental understanding of data mining principles, including supervised and unsupervised machine learning and statistical modeling
• gain skills to effectively communicate data-driven findings to executive stakeholders
• obtain practical, hand-on experience with contemporary "big data" platforms and tools, including R, Python and its libraries, Tableau, SQL and NoSQL databases, Hadoop, and the Apache suite
• apply data science and analytics to real-world data sets across domains

The Penn State Difference

Delivered in a strong partnership between four colleges and four academic departments from across the University, the program offers you the opportunity to benefit from the expertise and unique perspectives of faculty who have diverse backgrounds. With their broad spectrum of experiences, our faculty can teach you to collect, classify, analyze, and model data at large and ultra-large scales and across domains, using statistics, computer science, machine learning, and software engineering.

Data Analytics Base Program Course Work

In the comprehensive base program curriculum, the focus of instruction is on big data and database design processes. You can learn data management technologies and techniques for descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive analytics used to leverage competitive advantage in an array of disciplines. Courses are designed to help you become an expert in the data sciences and enable you to apply analytics techniques to business problems involving high volumes of structured and unstructured data.

Integrated Concentrations May Easily Lead to a Second Credential

You can also choose a program option to concentrate in business analytics or marketing analytics. By selecting one of these concentrations, you may earn some or all of the required credits needed for the 9-credit Graduate Certificate in Business Analytics or the 12-credit Graduate Certificate in Marketing Analytics. A separate application and program acceptance is required for each credential.

Who Should Apply

This degree program is an ideal choice for data scientists, data engineers, data architects, research analysts, and data/information analysts who work in positions that require the design and maintenance of big data and data analytics systems, as well as:

• data mining
• data modeling
• data architecture
• extraction, transformation, loading (ETL) development
• business intelligence (BI) development

GRE/GMAT waivers are available to highly qualified candidates.