How universities fill the talent gap: The data scientist in the Italian case

Abstract

This research paper explores Italian study programs in data science in order to verify if knowledge and skills developed during the universities' path are fit with data scientist job demand. The issue is introduced considering the companies' growing need to derive insights from data, and consequently, to search for a staff with analytical expertise, the so-called data scientists quite rare. Literature review is focused on the data scientist's specific characteristics. According to the ideal profile, the data scientist should possess skills enabling the scientific collection, analysis and use of quantitative data in addition to managerial and communication skills, ensuring profitable interactions with decision-makers. The methodology introduces an innovative semi-automatic linguistic analysis of textual data, which enriches traditional statistical methods in text annotation and increasingly constitutes a key step to retrieve more and more precise information from large corpora. As results, the data scientist education in Italy is not widespread and the skills match highlights significant gaps between universities and companies in developing programming and software development skills. In conclusion, an intensive university-business cooperation in order to prepare future professionals, in line with technological trends and company requirements, could contribute to fill this gap, producing positive effects for the social and economic development.

Mathematical Skills Demand for Financial Decision Making in Companies

“…The results obtained in this research allow us to conclude that employers require that their employees know, understand and know how to apply mathematical skills in the finance area of their company: use math to solve basic financial budgeting problems, understand math calculations to solve financial interest calculation problems, and apply math skills to solve complicated financial problems such as the effect of inflation and making investment plans. These results are consistent with [26] and [23]. They identified the math ability as one of the top ten skills managers and business leaders have to have.…”

“…These results are consistent with those of [20] who showed that the mathematical discipline has links with technology knowledge. Currently, companies need the employee to have interdisciplinary knowledge [23].…”

“…International studies show that the skills related to data analysis and data integration required by the productive sector, have a connection with statistics knowledge. Some of the findings reported by studies on general knowledge and skills required by the job position were: being an expert on data collection, analysis and integration process, an expert in statistics, computers, science or operational business research [23].…”

“…In addition, other companies requested analytical skills experience; ability to develop transversal knowledge with traditional domains, innovation and data. Interdisciplinary knowledge integrated with STEM disciplines (for its acronym in English: science, technology, engineering and mathematics) it is also requested, creativity, critical thinking and communication skills [23]. In another study, [24] point out that a data scientist has to have knowledge of both mathematics and statistics.…”

“…When analyzing the current trends in relation to digital demand and future job prospects that demand personnel with STEM skills, the results seem to indicate that the current demand is directed towards digital skills and that these analytical skills are connected to mathematical ability [24], [23], [20].…”