Advice needed on MSc in Business Intelligence

sashadoc

I've been working as a small animal vet for the last 15 years, but for a long time have been demoralised by poor working conditions, stress, and an ever-decreasing salary. I've been toying with the idea of a career change for the last 3 years and I'm on the verge of signing up for the MSc in Computing (Business Intelligence & Data Mining) at ITB, offered through distance learning. I have completed a number of computer science MOOCs which I have really enjoyed, and I have always been proficient at maths.
I have a young family and I have several concerns which I hope an unbiased audience may be able to help me with.

Does anyone have an opinion on the quality of this course?
Are the employment prospects as good as Google makes out, and what would be a typical starting salary for a BI graduate?
Flexibility in my work would be a real asset- is telecommuting or remote working an option in many analyst roles?

As well as the terrifying prospect of a career change it will be a struggle to manage my course fees, so I really want to be sure I'm making the right decision.
Thanks in advance for your input.

Interested Observer

Obviously I can't tell you that yeah you'll be grand and find a job but I work in a similar field and I currently see a lot of demand for BI skills. I guess getting your foot in the door in the first place is the difficult bit.

I have no idea how good or bad the course is, can you post the syllabus maybe?

sashadoc

Interested Observer wrote: »

Obviously I can't tell you that yeah you'll be grand and find a job but I work in a similar field and I currently see a lot of demand for BI skills. I guess getting your foot in the door in the first place is the difficult bit.

I have no idea how good or bad the course is, can you post the syllabus maybe?

Thanks for your response, and I'm not going to hold anyone responsible for making my mortgage repayments! I had tried to post a link but I'm not allowed as a new user so the following is copied from the course website:

Course Content

Year 1 Semester 1
Business Intelligence
Data Mining Algorithms
Year 1 Semester 2
Data Pre-processing & Exploration
Business Intelligence & Data Mining Applications
Year 2 Semester 3
Text Mining & Web Content Mining (Elective)
Geographical Information Systems Mining (Elective)
Multimedia Mining (Elective)
Students complete two of the three elective modules. Modules will be offered based on student demand and lecturer availability.
Year 2 Semester 4
MSc Research Project which can be industry based.
Students must complete 6 modules and a research project. All Modules are 10 ECTS Credits. The Research Project is 30 ECTS Credits.

A choice of modules across streams will be offered over an academic year.
Electives will only be available at the discretion of the institute, subject to availability of lecturing staff and sufficient expression of interest from students.

Course Modules :

Business Intelligence Module Aims :
Investigate state of the art and research trends in business intelligence and related topics including how business intelligence adds value; BI architecture, BI front-end, Data privacy and ethics; Business Intelligence and Data Mining methodologies, and the Business Intelligence life cycle.

Data Mining Algorithms Module Aims :
This module is aimed at students who want to study advanced concepts relating to knowledge discovery in data. Using both lectures and independent research, the module will address a number of issues relating to understanding and optimising the performance of data mining algorithms.


Data Pre-processing and Exploration Module Aims :
To investigate the properties of data, how to visualise data, and how pre-proposing can improve the information content of data.

Business Intelligence and Data Mining Applications Module Aims :
Apply state of the art business intelligence, data preparation and data mining techniques to a specific case study and dataset.
Starting with a business objective and data, work through all stages of an appropriate methodology to extract knowledge from the data in accordance with the business objectives, and present the results to stakeholders in the appropriate language, highlighting how the knowledge learned can be used to add value to the business.


Text Mining & Web Content Mining Module Aims :
Investigate state of the art and research trends in text mining, including information retrieval and web content mining.
Critique and evaluate the performance of algorithms for both text mining and information retrieval

Multimedia Mining Module Aims :
Traditional data mining has proved to be a successful approach to extracting new knowledge from collections of structured digital data usually stored in databases. Whereas data mining was done in the early days primarily on numerical data, the tools needed today are tools for discovering relationships between objects or segments within multimedia document components, such as classifying images based on their content, extracting patterns in sound, categorising speech and music, and recognising and tracking objects in video streams. This module will introduce the fundamental concepts of multimedia data mining and will demonstrate how to apply proven mining techniques to large multimedia datasets.

MSc Research Project :
To give students the experience of an individual computing project at postgraduate level.
To give students responsibility for substantial independent working and a full project life cycle, from problem specification through to implementation and evaluation

Interested Observer

The modules look fairly solid to me. I would say it's important that there's a decent practical element involved. I did an MSc a few years ago so I rang the lecturer in charge of the course before applying to chat to him about it, found it very worthwhile, so maybe do that too just to get a sense of where previous graduates have ended up?

Antarctica

Just at a guess I doubt flexibility would be available until you have a few years experience however some of the good companies have a work life balance whilst others work you very had. Try checking out company reviews on glassdoor.com

Looks like a good course, maybe you could search linkedin to try find people who have done the course and ask them about it. You may need to connect with these people or create a premium account to message directly without connecting.

Suprised about your Vet experience, thought it would have been well paid.