Careers in Data Analytics and Computational Social Science
Career Advising
For DACSS career advising, contact:
Marcie Muehlke, Associate Director of Graduate Student Services, or schedule a career advising appointment.
erwhite [at] umass [dot] edu (Emily White), Assistant Director of Graduate Student Services, or schedule a career advising appointment.
Career Opportunities
The current job market for professionals with a background in data analytics and computational social science is ripe with opportunity.
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 15% job growth in data science through 2029, 15% faster than the national average for all occupations.
- In Massachusetts, occupations related to data analysis are projected to grow by 20-25% between 2016 and 2026
- EAB recently found that occupations requiring education in data analytics grew by an estimated 143% over the past 3 years.
- A recent Burning Glass report identified over 30,000 job postings in a single 12-month period in the Boston metro area.
- Boston is among the top 10 metro areas in terms of both total and per capita demand for data analytics professionals (Burning Glass).
- Massachusetts is tied with California and Washington for the state with the highest relative demand for data analytics professionals (Burning Glass).
Companies are looking for employees who combine data science skills with a substantive understanding of how those data are generated and collected and the best way to communicate data-driven insights to a general audience.
Career Preparation
The DACSS program curriculum has been carefully designed to prepare students for the workforce and reflects current industry standards for data science professionals. According to EAB, a higher education consulting group, employers expect graduates to have sufficient training in programming, statistics, and data communication. The core DACSS curriculum prepares students to meet industry standards in all three areas, while an additional three advanced technical courses will ensure graduates have cutting-edge training in one or more social science research methods such as survey research, network analysis or computational text analysis.
Skills workshops are offered regularly to provide a students with the knowledge needed to pursue additional specialized career-relevant skill sets. For example, students may identify faculty sponsors to pursue additional training in particular areas within data science and high-performance cloud computing through AWS, Google, or other corporate or independent certification organizations.
Career Resources
DACSS students at UMass Amherst have access to multiple career resources, including the UMass Amherst Graduate School's Office of Professional Development, a monthly DACSS career development newsletter, networking events with alumni, and other opportunities to help DACSS students make connections and build their professional profile.
These and other supports are in place to ensure that DACSS students are ready to put all that they learn to use in their professional lives.
Career Outcomes
Our alumni have been accepted into graduate programs (primarily PhD and MPA) at Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago, Columbia, and LSE. Alumni have also gone on to work for a range of private sector and non-profit organizations: a tech startup in San Francisco, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, Facebook, and multiple research and consulting firms.