University of Illinois and Coursera launch the first-ever MOOC-based Data Science Master's Degree

NEW DELHI: Coursera, an online education company, has announced a data science master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - home to one of the top five computer science graduate programs in the United States. The university will open access to its data science curriculum at lower cost of a traditional on-campus or online master’s degree through the Master of Computer Science in Data Science (MCS-DS) degree on Coursera.

Few highly ranked master’s programs exist around data science - developed specifically for training data scientists.

The degree taps into potential data scientists who are unable to take a traditional education path by reimagining graduate-level education as a "stackable" degree.

Daphne Koller, president and co-founder of Coursera, said, “Many people in India are taking online courses in data and computer science. The MCS-DS degree combines an education in the most high demand career skills with an entirely new educational structure that empowers the student with choices in how to pursue his or her education.”