University Teknologi MARA (UiTM) has yet again made its mark in the education arena by becoming its first varsity in the world to establish the SAS Academy for Data Science under UiTM’s Faculty of Computer & Mathematical Sciences (FSKM). The collaboration, a first in Malaysia, will enable its students to attain professional big data and analytics certifications as an added value. By incorporating the training into its curriculum, the university will also be able to cultivate a skilled talent pool of young data scientists in line with Malaysia’s 2020 digital nation vision.
To achieve this vision and address the need for data science skills in today’s digital economy, the Malaysian government has set a national goal to strengthen the talent pool by training 20,000 data professionals by 2020. The establishment of the SAS Academy for Data Science at UiTM directly addresses this challenge by providing students with another advanced curriculum for both big data and advanced analytics capabilities. With nearly 300 hours of content provided by SAS, UiTM will further enhanced students with knowledge and skills of advanced analytics, which includes topics on analytical modeling, machine learning and optimization to stay competitive especially with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence in the industries and businesses.
Through this partnership, UiTM will create further knowledge and skillsets in Big Data Analytics to add to the talent pool of capable, experienced and confident data scientists which would in turn help fuel a data-driven economy in Malaysia. UiTM believes pioneering and crafting future jobs are the way forward to produce talents who are creative, sought after and captains of the industry.
Under the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed today between UiTM’s Professor Emeritus Dato’ Dr. Hassan Said and Mr. Bhuvan Nijhawan, Regional Director, Education, Asia Pacific, UiTM’s faculty members will be trained, certified and accredited by the global SAS Academy for Data Science.
“In today’s analytics economy, data skills are a valuable commodity. UiTM is a forward-looking institution and their commitment to equip their graduates with the right skills has led them to become one of the top institutions in Malaysia in terms of graduate employability. SAS looks forward in continuing to partner with UiTM to develop data and analytics capabilities in Malaysia and accelerating the Malaysian digital economy,” said Andrew Tan, Country Manager, SAS Malaysia.
The collaboration between UiTM and SAS aims to train as many data professionals in the next 3 years, taking the organizations’ 20-year partnership to new heights. In 2013, UiTM worked with SAS to offer the SAS Joint Certificate under its Bachelor of Science (Honours) Statistics program. The advanced certificate will now also be offered under UiTM’s Master of Data Science program to better prepare students to work in data-driven businesses.