Report: 59% of employed data scientists learned skills on their own or via a MOOC

The majority of employed data scientists gained their skills through self-learning or a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) rather than a traditional computer science degree, according to a survey from data scientist community Kaggle, which was acquired by Google Cloud earlier this year. Some 32% of full-time data scientists started learning machine learning or data science through a MOOC, while 27% said that they began picking up the needed skills on their own, the 2017 State of Data Science & Machine Learning Survey report found. Some 30% got their start in data science at a university, according to the survey of more than 16,000 people in the field. More than half of currently employed data scientists still use MOOCs for ongoing education and skillbuilding, the report found, demonstrating the potential of these courses for helping people gain real world skills. Data scientist took the no. 1 spot in Glassdoor's Best Jobs in America list in 2016 and 2017, and reports a median base salary of $110,000.