Make Your Data Degree Pay Off: Build, Deploy, Measure
Choose a data degree that turns math and code into a working system you can ship and monitor. Start with a role lane (analyst, ML engineer, data engineer, AI product). Learn the core math, Python/SQL, and version control. Grow one project each term: clean data → features → model → API → monitoring. Log results with dates and tests. Do this and your degree produces usable evidence—not claims. Pick a lane so weekly work makes sense One lane keeps subjects, projects, and internships aligned. Lane Weekly work First proof to ship Analyst SQL joins, dashboards, cohort math A dashboard with definitions + a 1-page “what changed” note ML Engineer features, training, eval, serving A model with tests, a /predict endpoint, latency note Data Engineer ingestion, schema, pipelines, tests An ETL job with data contracts + unit tests AI Product prompt/LLM flows, evals, UX A smal...