Maimounatou Cherif hadn’t planned on going back to school.
The 24-year-old moved to Indianapolis to live with her uncle and see the world outside her home country of Guinea. She got a job at an Amazon warehouse, but after working long hours and being on her feet, she wanted to make a change. Cherif is one of many students who are choosing to study data analytics at Ivy Tech Community College — a major she picked for its flexibility and universality.
“If you work in an IT field,” she said, “you can work everywhere.”
Cherif’s not alone. Data analytics is Ivy Tech’s fastest-growing program in Indianapolis. In the 2020-2021 school year, the program had just 16 students. As of December, that number has grown to 165 students — an increase of over 930%, according to data provided to Mirror Indy. The program’s growth is part of a wider trend within Ivy Tech’s School of Information Technology, which has increased enrollment by 65% since fall 2022.
The program, which has short- and long-term certificates and associate degree options, boasts a median salary of $76,724, has a 100% online option and is eligible for state funding that allows some students to earn certificates for free. But students and faculty say the main draw is the employability and flexibility from a field as broad as data analytics.
To be clear, said Patrick Benner, dean of Ivy Tech’s school of information technology, there’s no shortage of data to analyze. Analysts take data from everyday interactions — from doctor’s appointments to trips to the grocery store — to track, evaluate and draw conclusions for various companies about the way people interact with the world.
“We need people who can take that raw data and turn it into useful information that we can all make decisions on,” he said.
Numbers to foster human connection
Data analytics is about numbers, but it’s also about understanding how people think. That’s how professor Dilara Askarova sees it, anyway.
For those reasons, she lectures students in her data visualization and analysis class about presenting data in a way that’s clean and easy to understand.
Aksarova reminds her students to remove unnecessary markings on graphs and to think about the most straightforward way to present data depending on what the numbers reveal. It’s all about understanding how people think and interpret information.
“Our job is to explore the data and explain the data and send the message to the audience at the end,” Askarova said.
Askarova has done this for many years. Prior to coming to Ivy Tech as a full-time professor, she worked as a senior business intelligence developer, which is an analyst that gathered and displayed data for a local health insurance company.
Data analytics, she said, is growing fast at Ivy Tech because the degree opens up a wide variety of jobs and skills, as well as what she calls “wiggle room to find your passion.”
Student experience
Students in the data analytics program see it as a valuable degree that could help them to gain upward mobility.
Phat Ly, 32, knows that the world is changing fast. He saw it firsthand working 10 years in hospitality and real estate and sees an opportunity to untangle the web of information overload.
“We need to learn, unlearn and relearn,” he said. “So, in my opinion, data analytics is a good way to get a job because sometimes we are overwhelmed by information, but it is a good opportunity for us to manipulate the data, and do work on it.”
Ly, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam three years ago, aspires to earn his master’s degree in biostatistics. But he’s starting with data analytics because he feels like it opens up opportunities for jobs in America.
Cherif, on the other hand, is hoping she can eventually earn her associate degree in data analytics and use the skills to build her brand on TikTok. She loves clothes and wants to create content online.
But most importantly, she feels like data analytics is a degree that will give her the freedom to find work anywhere she goes — even back to her family in Guinea.
“When I get my degree or my associate’s, I can feel like I can work everywhere,” she said, “and go back home.”
Claire Rafford covers higher education for Mirror Indy in partnership with Open Campus.
Are you an Indianapolis college student, faculty or staff member? Contact higher ed reporter Claire Rafford at claire.rafford@mirrorindy.org or follow on Twitter/Instagram @clairerafford.
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