Data Science Transfer Pathways From Associate’s to Bachelor’s Programs

Abstract

A substantial fraction of students who complete their college education at a public university in the United States begin their journey at one of the 935 public 2-year colleges. While the number of 4-year colleges offering bachelor's degrees in data science continues to increase, data science instruction at many 2-year colleges lags behind. A major impediment is the relative paucity of introductory data science courses that serve multiple student audiences and can easily transfer. In addition, the lack of predefined transfer pathways (or articulation agreements) for data science creates a growing disconnect that leaves students who want to study data science at a disadvantage. We describe opportunities and barriers to data science transfer pathways. Five points of curricular friction merit attention: 1) a first course in data science, 2) a second course in data science, 3) a course in scientific computing, data science workflow, and/or reproducible computing, 4) lab sciences, and 5) navigating communication, ethics, and application domain requirements in the context of general education and liberal arts course mappings. We catalog existing transfer pathways, efforts to align curricula across institutions, obstacles to overcome with minimally disruptive solutions, and approaches to foster these pathways. Improvements in these areas are critically important to ensure that a broad and diverse set of students are able to engage and succeed in undergraduate data science programs.