MSBA trains students for in-demand, solution-oriented careers
Friday, March 29, 2024
Awards, Accolades, Academics, Rankings and Achievements
By Karen Villarreal
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – MARCH 29, 2024 – Dr. Murad Moqbel, program director for UTRGV’s Master of Science in Business Analytics, says “data is the new oil.”
The MS program, recently ranked 4th in Texas by Fortune, helps train and prepare UTRGV students for jobs with companies that collect data needed to derive insights, improve efficiencies, reduce waste and increase profitability.
“It used to be that people made decisions based on their experience or intuition, but analytics allows us to make data-driven decisions,” Moqbel said.
“In the MSBA program, we teach our students how to process all this data – transforming it from raw facts or ‘crude oil’ to clear, useful information,” Moqbel said.
It is predicted that the employment rate for data scientists will grow by 36 percent from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations, with a projected 17,700 openings for data scientists each year.
UTRGV’s MSBA program – which also ranked 17th nationwide on Fortune’s Best Online Master’s in Business Analytics Programs for 2024 based on a combination of selectivity, success and demand – can be completed in as little as a year.
HIGH RANKING ANALYSIS
Dr. Bin Wang, chair of the Department of Information Systems in the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship, was a leading force in organizing the MSBA program five years ago.
“We took a lot of care when we developed our curriculum to make sure we have a high-quality program, and people who care about our students to make this the program really successful,” Wang said.
In addition to training students in the highly technical, leading-edge analytics skills sought out by many industries – like data mining, machine learning and data visualization – the UTRGV MSBA is accessible to students from a variety of backgrounds, not only those with business, math, or computer science expertise.
An analysis of their students found that more than half have a non-business undergraduate degree, Wang said.
“Many joined our program and were enabled to shift careers,” Wang said. “Anyone who has an interest in using data to project how businesses can grow successfully in the future is welcome.”
ABOUT UTRGV
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.
UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.