Aligning BI&A curriculum with industry demand

The growing demand for business intelligence & analytics (BI&A) practitioners has been recognized in higher education. In the past decade, over 130 business analytical academic programs have been launched. To the best of our knowledge, no research has examined whether the current business analytics curriculum design fully fits the industry demand. To answer this question, we take the initial steps of identifying a common set of skills that is frequently required across different business analytics job positions. Further, we reviewed undergraduate business analytics/data science curricula at 29 universities across the U.S. Our results show that companies expect a balanced set of soft and technical skills for entry level BI&A job positions. In terms of the gap between the academic curriculum and skills in demand, Python, Microsoft's Excel, communication, and collaboration skills are underdeveloped in most academic curricula. This study can help universities better align their curricula with the industry demand.