Business Analytics Master’s Degrees

An M.S. in Business Analytics (sometimes called an M.S. in Analytics) is intended to help you identify opportunities hidden in big data and apply these findings to real-world business challenges. Data analysts provide organizations with ideas for smarter strategic management, improved financial performance and better operational efficiencies.

It’s a wide-ranging and challenging discipline. Successful graduates may find themselves analyzing everything from consumer behavior and social media to supply-chain and marketing data.

Courses

M.S./B.A. degrees usually take one to two years to complete. You’ll typically be required to take a variety of core courses in data analytics and business (e.g., financial accounting), as well as electives in a specific field of interest. Many programs include a capstone project or practicum.

Typical courses include:

• Business data analytics
• Operations research
• Project management
• Database analysis
• Predictive analytics

Check your preferred school for specific admission requirements. Some will expect an undergraduate degree in economics, mathematics, engineering, business, computer science, statistics or a related field.

On a related note, The M.S. in Marketing Analytics has developed to help marketers manage the explosion of consumer information. Marketers are now expected to make data-driven decisions based on quantitative analysis. Customer-centric approaches have replaced product-focused models. M.S./M.A. programs blend classes on statistics and data analytics with relevant marketing subjects (e.g., customer insight). In addition to the core syllabus, schools usually include a wide variety of electives (e.g., international marketing) and an internship or practicum. Some also offer specific concentrations.

Typical courses include:

• Marketing management
• Advanced marketing analysis
• Customer analysis
• Statistical programming
• Quantitative methods
• Database management
• Data mining and visualization
• Applied marketing research

New Developments

The big word in business analytics today is prescriptive analytics. While predictive analytics looks at what may happen, prescriptive analytics focuses on why things are happening and recommending appropriate courses of action.

For example, Google has been experimenting with a self-driven car that can anticipate what might be coming round the bend and determine what effect its decisions will have on the ultimate outcome.

The second important trend is consolidation. As data barriers (e.g., siloes) fall away and new sources of data (e.g., sensors) proliferate, analytics is moving to the center of the enterprise. As Timo Elliott notes:

“The next generation of information infrastructures will combine big data, transactional data, analytic data and ‘content’ into a single, coherent set of services that Gartner calls an ‘information capabilities framework.'”

And it is business data analysts who will be responsible for managing this framework.

Want more? Take a look at our in-depth coverage of data science developments in Manufacturing, Gaming and Hospitality and Finance.

Business Analytics in Action

1. World’s Biggest Data Breaches (Developers: David McCandless & Tom Evans)

2. GED VIZ: Visualizing Global Economic Relations (Developer: Jan Arpe)

3. Bloomberg Billionaires Index (Developer: Bloomberg Visual Data)

School Listings

We found 194 universities in our directory offering Business Analytics programs.

We have another page that provides detailed profiles of all the online Master's in Business Analytics programs in our database: you can find it here.

If you represent a university and would like to contact us about editing any of our listings, or adding new programs, please send an email to info (at) mastersindatascience.org.

Alabama

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

District Of Columbia

American University

Washington, District of Columbia

Master of Science in Analytics

HOW TO APPLYCURRICULUMCOST

OFFERED BY: Kogod School of Business

DELIVERY: Online

LENGTH: 33 credit hours

Online MBA with Analytics Concentration

HOW TO APPLYCURRICULUMCOST

OFFERED BY: Kogod School of Business

DELIVERY: Online

LENGTH: 15 months

ad

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Illinois

Indiana

International

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

Syracuse University

Syracuse, New York

Master of Science in Business Analytics

HOW TO APPLYCURRICULUMCOST

OFFERED BY: Whitman School of Management

DELIVERY: Online

LENGTH: 18 months

ad

North Carolina

Ohio

Oklahoma

Ontario

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin