Do you need a degree to become a data
analyst and learn your first job? I decided to answer this question once
and for all. Becoming a data analyst
is one of the most rewarding things you can do,
but it's becoming harder and harder when it comes with many benefits,
such as an entry level salary of 74,000 per year, the option to work from home,
and a rising demand for data analysts. The entry level
jobs are incredibly competitive. All you have to do is get your first job
and it becomes so much easier. Most people never even get their first
get out of this job. That's why in this video,
I want to clear up some confusion.
We're going to cover whether online courses are actually enough
to get a job as a beginner and what degrees and certificates
are best for data analysts. Now, of course, I had an assumption before I started
I'm not a beginner in the data field and I help people land their jobs before,
but I was wrong and I was completely blown away
by what I found out and how easily people were landing jobs
but just doing the right thing. But to understand what the right thing
is, allow me to go back and start from the beginning. Our society's view on higher
education has changed a lot. Back in 1960, only about 8% of all Americans
above the age of 25 had graduated college. Yes, 8% graduating
college was a pretty rare thing. It made you special,
and it wasn't something that everyone did.
30 years later, in 1990,
and this amount had increased to 22% of all Americans
above the age of 25. This means that the amount with a degree
nearly tripled from 8% to 22% in just 30 years,
going another 30 years forward. And we ended up in 2020. So just a few years
from where we are today in 2020, 37.5% or just above one third of all Americans,
25 and above, had graduated college. Now, keep in mind that this number
is significantly higher among young people and will keep increasing as previous
generations fade away in the statistics. So in just 60 years,
we went from 8% of all Americans to 37.5% of Americans
with a college degree. And that's a lot of people
with a total population of 330 million in the United States. It means that over 120 million people have
a college degree at this exact moment. And this really shows
how the landscape has changed. While the demands have increased, a degree
is simply not worth what it used to be. And we need to understand this and what a degree actually means today
for aspiring data analyst. Now, all these people spent a massive
amount of money on acquiring a degree. We're talking about tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands
to acquire this piece of paper.
The cost of a college degree is only increasing,
and it's not just because of inflation. The average tuition fee is over
$26,000 per year in the US alone, with four years
to get a bachelor's degree. That's over $100,000 for this
piece of paper and that's a lot of money, which is why more and more people
have started considering other forms of education,
specifically upskilling themselves through free or low cost resources
available on the Internet, and considering held
at $26,000 per year for college without taking into account
the cost of an apartment, groceries, activities, books, transportation
and so on. I think it's a fairly low number
compared to what it could be. Let's say you're lucky enough to attend Stanford University near San Francisco,
where the cost of living is insane. Then you should expect to pay at least a thousand bucks each month for a
one single bed in a shared apartment.
And if you want to live alone, well,
then you better win the lottery. So the big question is, is it worth
getting a degree to become at the analyst? The easy answer is that if you get a degree in the fields
like computer science, statistics, I.T. and so on, that will definitely help
you become at the analyst. It's because they teach you some of the fundamental skills,
like the math, the statistical knowledge. But in general, it's
because they teach you how to think analytically, solve problems
and do hard stuff. But for most degrees,
that's just about it. And your hard skills won't be relevant
to become a data analyst at all.
To become a data analyst,
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