Where does the interest lie in Canadian universities?

If the Internet searches conducting in Canada are an indicator, it appears that Brock University and Ryerson University are leading the number of searches conducted in Canada in comparison with other institutions namely Waterloo University, McGill University, and Concordia University.

These trends suggest that a large interest has developed in the newer institutions of higher learning in Canada, i.e., Brock and Ryerson, while the more established institutions may face some competition in attracting talent.

 

Taliban attack a 14-year old in Pakistan

It is hard to believe that men armed with sophisticated weapons would be afraid of a 14-year old. The 14-year old Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban on her way back from school. Malala Yousafzai has been the most vocal supporter of equal education rights for girls in Pakistan.

I spoke with Steve Paikin in Toronto, Canada, about what the attack on Malala meant for Pakistan. The interview can be watched here.

 

More about Malala is available at:

http://dawn.com/2012/10/10/malala-yousufzai-sok-daa/

Research support specialist position at Ryerson University

The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto has an opening for a research support specialist to assist with monitoring current research projects and to provide assistance with econometric/statistical analysis and training.

Required qualifications:

• Completion of a Bachelor in economics, statistics, economic geography, or quantitative psychology with experience in programming and data analysis. Master degree in the mentioned areas is a very strong asset.
• Extensive coursework in econometrics and statistical analysis is preferred.
• 3+ years work experience in applied analytics involving econometrics and statistical analysis.
• Experience in research monitoring and budget management.
• Knowledge of advanced statistical analysis, such as SAS, Stata, Eviews, R, SPSS, or LimDep is required. Proficiency with advanced statistical and econometrics techniques required.

Further details are available at:

https://hr.cf.ryerson.ca/hr/careers/index.cfm?fuseaction=post.view&location=External&post_id=34813 

Big data, big analytics, big opportunity

Data, data, every where
Nor any byte to think

The world today is awash with data. Corporations, governments, and individuals are busy generating petabytes of data on culture, economy, environment, religion, and society.  While data has become abundant and ubiquitous, data analysts needed to turn raw data into knowledge are in fact in short supply.

With big data comes big opportunity for the educated middle class in the developing world where an army of data scientists can be trained to support the offshoring of analytics from the western countries where such needs are unlikely to be filled from the locally available talent.

In a 2011 report, McKinsey Global Institute revealed that the United States alone faces a shortage of almost 200,000 data analysts. The American economy requires an additional 1.5 million managers proficient in decision-making based on insights gained from the analysis of large data sets. And even when Hal Varian, Google’s famed chief economist, profoundly proclaimed that “the real sexy job in 2010s is to be a statistician,” there were not many takers for the opportunity in the West where students pursuing degrees in statistics, engineering, and other empirical fields are small in number and are often visa students from abroad.

A recent report by Statistics Canada revealed that two-thirds of those who graduated with a PhD in engineering from a Canadian University in 2005 spoke neither English nor French as mother tongue. Similarly, four out of 10 PhD graduates in computers, mathematics, and physical sciences did not speak a western language as mother tongue. Also, more than 60 per cent of engineering graduates were visible minorities, suggesting that the supply chain of highly qualified professional talent in Canada, and to a large extent in North America, is already linked to the talent emigrating from China, Egypt, India, Iran, and Pakistan.

The abundance of data and the scarcity of analysts present a unique opportunity for developing countries, which have an abundant supply of highly numerate youth who could be trained and mobilized en masse to write a new chapter in offshoring. This would require a serious rethink for thought leaders in developing countries who have not taxed their imaginations beyond thinking of policies to create sweat shops where youth would undersell their skills and see their potential wilt away while creating undergarments for consumers in the west. The fate of the youth in developing countries need not be restricted to stitching underwear or making cold calls from offshored call-centers in order for them to be part of the global value chains. Instead, they can be trained as skilled number-crunchers who would add value to otherwise worthless data for businesses, big and small.

A multi-billion dollar industry

The past decade has witnessed a major change in the sectorial evolution of some very large manufacturing firms known in the past for mostly hardware engineering and now evolving into firms delivering services, such as business analytics. Take IBM for example, which specialized as a computer hardware company producing servers, desktop computers, laptops, and other supporting infrastructure. That was IBM’s past. Today, IBM is focused on analytics. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising, trying to rebrand itself as a leader in business analytics. In fact, it has divested from several hardware initiatives, such as manufacturing laptops, and has instead spent billions in acquisitions to build its analytic credentials. For instance, IBM has acquired SPSS for over a billion dollars to capture the retail side of the Business analytics market. For large commercial ventures, IBM acquired Cognos to offer full service analytics.

In 2011 alone, the business analytics software market was worth over $30 billion. Oracle ($6.1bn), SAP ($4.6 bn), IBM ($4.4 bn), and Microsoft and SAS each with $3.3 bn in sales led the market. It is estimated that the sale of business analytics software alone will hit $50 billion by 2016.  Dan Vesset of IDC, a company specializing in watching industry trends, aptly noted that business analytics had “crossed the chasm into the mainstream mass market” and the “demand for business analytics solutions is exposing the previously minor issue of the shortage of highly skilled IT and analytics staff.”

In addition to the bundled software and service sales offered by the likes of Oracle and IBM, business analytics services in the consulting domain generated several billion dollars more worldwide. While the large firms command the lion’s share in the analytics market, the billions left at the bottom are still a large enough prize to take the analytics plunge.

Several billion reasons to hop on the analytics bandwagon

While the IBMs of the world are focused largely on large corporations, the analytics needs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are unlikely to be met by IBM, Oracle, or other large players. Cost is the most important determinant. SMEs prefer to have analytics done on the cheap while the overheads of the large analytics firms run into millions of dollars thus pricing them out of the SME market. With offshoring comes the access to affordable talent in developing countries who can bid for smaller contracts and beat the competition in the West on price, and over time on quality as well.

The trick therefore, is to beat the IBMs of the world in the analytics game by not competing against them. Realizing that business analytics is not a market, but an amalgamation of several types of markets focused on delivering value-added services involving data capture, data warehousing, data cleaning, data mining, and data analysis, developing countries can carve out a niche for themselves by focusing exclusively on contracts that large firms will not bid for because of their intrinsic large overheads.

Leaving the fight for top dollars in analytics to top dogs, a cottage industry in analytics could be developed in the developing countries that may strive to serve the analytics need of SMEs. Take the example of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), Canada’s largest public transit agency with annual revenues exceeding a billion dollars. When TTC needed to have a large database of almost a half million commuter complaints analyzed, it turned to Ryerson University, rather than a large analytics firm. TTC’s decision to work with Ryerson University was motivated by two considerations. First the cost; as a public sector university, Ryerson believes strongly in serving the community and thus offered the services for gratis. The second reason is quality. Ryerson University, like most similar institutions of higher learning, excels in analytics where several faculty members work at the cutting edge of analytics and are more than willing to apply their skills to real life problems.

Why now?

The timing had never been better to undertake such an endeavor on a very large scale. The innovations in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the ready availability of the most advanced analytics software as freeware allows entrepreneurs in developing countries to compete worldwide. The Internet makes it possible to be part of global marketplaces with negligible costs. With cyber marketplaces such as Kijiji and Craigslist individuals can become proprietors offering services worldwide.

Using the freely available Google Sites, one can have a business website online immediately at no cost.Google Docs, another free service from Google, allows one to have a web server for free to share documents with collaborators or the rest of the world for free. Other free services, such as Google Trends, allow individual researchers to generate data on business and social trends without needing subscriptions for services that cost millions. The graph below is generated using Google trends showing daily visits to the websites of leading analytics firms. Without free access to such services, access to the data used to generate the same graph would carry a huge price tag.

Similarly, another free service from Google allows one to determine, for instance, which cities registered the highest number of search requests for ‘business analytics’. It appears that four of the top six cities where analytics are most popular are located in India, which is evident from the following graph where search intensity is mapped on a normalized index of 0 to 100.

The other big development of recent times is freeware that is leveling the playing field between haves and have-nots. In analytics, one of the most sophisticated computing platforms is R, which is available for free. Developers worldwide are busy developing the R platform, which now offers over 3,000 packages for free for analyzing data. From econometrics to operations research, R is fast becoming the lingua franca for computing. R has evolved from being popular just amongst computing geeks to having its praise sung by the New York Times.

R has also made some new friends, especially Paul Butler, a Canadian student who became a worldwide sensation by mapping the geography of Facebook. While being an intern at Facebook, Paul analyzed gigabytes of data to plot how Facebook’s friends were linked globally. His map (see the image below) became an instant hit worldwide and has been reproduced in publications thousands of times. If you are wondering what software Paul used to generate the map, wonder no more, the answer is R.

R is fast becoming the preferred computing platform for data scientists worldwide. For decades the data analysis market was ruled by the likes of SAS, SPSS, Stata and other similar players. R has taken over the imagination of data analysts as of late who are fast converging to R, especially after R’s ability to interact with Hadoop (another open source platform) for analyzing big data . In fact, most innovations in statistics are first coded in R so that the algorithms become available to all immediately and for free.

Source: http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/

The fact that R is freely available should not be taken lightly. A commercial license of a similarly equipped version of SPSS may cost up to US$7,500. The other big advantage of using R is the fact that thousands of training documents on the Internet and videos on YouTube are also available for free by volunteers.

Where to next

The private sector has to take the lead for business analytics to take root in developing countries. The governments could also have a small role in regulation. However, the analytics revolution has to take place not because of the public sector, but in spite of it. Even public sector universities in developing countries cannot be entrusted with the task where senior university administers do not warm up to innovative ideas unless they involve a junket in Europe or North America. At the same time the faculty in public sector universities in developing countries is often unwilling to try new technologies.

The private sector in developing countries may want to launch first an industry group that takes upon the task of certifying firms and individuals interested in analytics for quality, reliability, and ethical and professional competencies. This will help build confidence around national brands. Without such certification, foreign clients will be apprehensive to share their proprietary data with individuals hidden behind computer monitors thousands of miles away.

The private sector will also have to take the lead in training a professional workforce in analytics. Several companies train their employees in the latest technology and then market their skills to clients. The training houses would therefore also double as consulting practices where the best graduates may be retained as consultants.

Small virtual marketplaces could be setup in large cities where clients can put requests for proposals and pre-screened, qualified bidders can compete for the contract. The national self-regulating body will be responsible for screening qualified bidders from its vendor-of-record database, which it would make available to clients globally through the Internet.

The IBMs of the world see the analytics market to hit hundreds of billions in revenue in the next decade. The abundant talent in developing countries can be polished into a skilled workforce to tap into the analytics market to channel some revenue to developing countries while creating gainful employment opportunities for the educated youth who have been reduced to making cold calls from offshored call centers.

Reverse brain drain: Chinese MBA programs lure Western students, faculty

It use to be, and continues to be to a large extent, that Chinese students will land in North America or Europe pursuing higher education. The trends ar fast changing. China is now attracting students and faculty from North America.

This makes sense to a large extent. The professors in North America are delaying retirement resulting in a large number of unemployed PhDs searching for openings. Chinese universities could be the prefect launching pad for such faculty. At the same time, privatized MBAs have become prohibitively expensive without offering any real differentiation or competitive advantage. Chinese MBAs could be good place to learn about doing business in China than paying $100,000 to a North American university for similar course contents!

Chinese MBA programs lure Western students, faculty - The Globe and Mail

Workshop on Structural Equation Models

The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University is offering a one-day, hands–on workshop on Structural Equation Modelling. The workshop focuses on SEM theory and applications using R and Amos.

Instructors: Professor Richard Michon and Christine Buske

When: July 11, 2012 (8:30 to 3:30 pm)

Where: TRS 3-099 (55 Dundas Street West, 9th floor)

RSVP: Christine Buske (chr.buske@ryerson.ca)

Why Indian immigrants earn higher than others in America?

Immigrants born in India outdo others in achieving economic success in the Untied States. At the same time, Pakistan-born immigrants, while trailing behind Indians, do better than the native-born Americans. While both immigrant groups originate in South Asia, huge disparities in their economic success exist in the US that needs further exploration.

The estimates reported in the 2010 American Community Survey revealed that the median salaried household income of India-born immigrants was around $94,700. In comparison, the median household income of native-born Americans was estimated at $51,750. Unlike the Pakistan-born immigrants in Canada, who lagged behind others in economic prosperity, Pakistanis in America are relatively thriving where the median household income of Pakistan-born immigrants is 18% higher than that of the native-born Americans.

The American Community Survey for 2010 (latest data available from the US Census Bureau) reveal that amongst South Asians living in the US, India-born immigrants are far ahead of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Afghanis. Even when compared with immigrants from Egypt, a country known for supplying highly educated immigrants to the US, Indians report exceptionally higher indicators of economic progress.

Source: American Community Survey, 2010

Indian-born immigrants also reported one of the lowest poverty rates at 4%. Afghanistan-born immigrants reported the highest poverty rate where one in five Afghan immigrants was deemed below the poverty line in the US. While Pakistan-born immigrants reported higher median household incomes than the native-born Americans, surprisingly 14% of the Pakistan-born immigrants were below the poverty line compared to only 9.4% of the native-born Americans.

Another indicator of financial distress amongst households in North America is the percentage of household income spent on gross rent. Households spending 30 percent or more of household income on rent are considered financially distressed. Amongst households who live in rental units, 57% of the immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt spent more than 30% of the household income on rent compared to only 24% of immigrants from India.

Source: American Community Survey, 2010

These poverty statistics raise several questions. For instance, despite having similar South Asian heritage, Pakistan-born immigrants report a 2.4-times higher rate of poverty than their Indian counterparts. Furthermore, poverty among younger cohorts (18 years old or younger) is even worse amongst immigrants from Pakistan than from India. At the same time almost 50% of under-18 Afghan immigrants are reportedly below the poverty line in the US. These statistics necessitate the need to explore the reasons behind disparities amongst immigrants from South Asia.

I am presenting here a socio-economic comparison of South Asians in the US. I have restricted the reporting to immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. This is done because India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and to some extent Afghanistan have more in common in culture and recent history than other countries in South Asia. I have thrown in Egypt for good measure to serve as a control for immigrants from another Muslim country with a different cultural background.

The purpose of this comparative review is to determine what are the reasons behind the success of India-born immigrants in the US. Could it be that the immigrants from India had luck on their side, or could it be that Indian immigrants possessed the necessary ingredients to succeed in the highly competitive labour market in the United States. More importantly, one needs to explore why immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh lag behind those from India in achieving the same levels of economic success.

The immigrant wage gaps have been a focus of several studies in the past. A whole host of theories have been forwarded to explain why such gaps exist. For instance, Nielsen and others (2001) suggest that such gaps exist because of lack of adequate qualifications and assimilation of immigrants in the mainstream. They believe that a “large fraction of that gap would disappear if only immigrants could find employment and thus accumulate work experience.” Aldashev and others (2008) found that the immigrant wage gap in Germany was lower for those who studied in Germany suggesting that improving education in Germany improves immigrants’ income prospects.

Sizing the South Asians

With approximately 1.8 million individuals, India- born immigrants form the largest cohort amongst South Asians in the US. The American Community Survey (ACS) in 2010 estimated Pakistan-born immigrants at 300,000, Bangladesh-born immigrants at 153,000, and Afghanistan-born immigrants at 60,000. Egypt-born immigrants totalled 133,000. Immigrants from India were approximately six-times the size of Pakistan-born immigrants. The relatively large size of Indian immigrants leads to larger social networks, which help with searching for better employment prospects.

Despite their large size, most India-born immigrants in the US are recent arrivals. Whereas 47% of the India-born immigrants arrived in the US after 2000, only 36% of the Pakistan-born immigrants arrived after 2000. This suggests that the economic success of immigrants from India is driven by the recent arrivals. Relatively speaking, immigrants from Afghanistan have enjoyed the longest tenure in the US of all South Asian countries discussed here. Notice that while 42% of immigrants from Afghanistan arrived in the US before 1980, only 25% of the Indian immigrants accomplished the same.

Source: American Community Survey, 2010

Pakistanis have larger families

With 4.3 persons per households, immigrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan reported significantly larger family sizes. In comparison, the native-born population reported a household size of 2.6 persons whereas the size of India-born immigrant households was around 3.5 persons. The difference between immigrants from India and other South Asians is more pronounced when one looks at the per capita earnings. Owing to their smaller household size, immigrants from India reported significantly higher per capita incomes than the rest. For instance, Bangladesh-born immigrants reported 50% less in median per capita income than those from India. And while immigrants from Pakistan reported higher household incomes than the immigrants from Egypt, the larger household size of Pakistan-born immigrants brought their per capita incomes lower than that of Egyptians.

Larger household size results in overcrowding, especially amongst low-income households, who often live in rental units. The average household size of rental households from Pakistan was found to be 33% larger than the same from immigrants from India. 15% of households from Pakistan were found to have more than one occupant on average per room compared to only 6% of those from India.

Women in the Labour Force

A key source of distinction between the immigrants from India and other South Asians is the higher participation of Indian women in the labour force. A much higher integration of women in the labour force is one of the reasons why immigrants from India have fared much better than others in the United States. Consider that only 42% of the women from Pakistan were active in the labour force in the US compared to 57% women from India. In fact women from Pakistan reported the lowest participation in the labour force in the US falling behind women from Egypt, Afghanistan , and Bangladesh.

Education Matters the Most

It should come as no surprise that immigrants from India are one of the most educated cohort in the United States. Almost 42% of immigrants from India over the age of 25 reported having a graduate (Masters) or a professional degree. In comparison, only 10% of the native-born adults reported having a graduate or professional degree. Approximately 23% of adult immigrants from Egypt and Pakistan reported having a graduate or professional degree.

The correlation between higher education attainment and higher median household incomes is explicitly presented in the graph below. India-born immigrants with professional degrees also reported significantly higher incomes than the rest. In comparison, immigrants from Afghanistan with one of the lowest incidence of professional degrees reportedly the lowest median household incomes.

Source: American Community Survey, 2010

The gender divide is again instrumental between immigrants from India and the rest. Whereas 70% of the India-born female adults reported having a Bachelors degree or higher, only 46% of adult females born in Pakistan reported the same in the US. At the same time only 28% of the native-born female adults in the US reported completing university education.

Better Education Better Careers

The education attainment levels amongst adult immigrants determine, to a large extent, their career choices. University education resulting in professional or graduate degrees allows immigrants to qualify for well-paying jobs in the US. Immigrants from India have been able to use their high-quality education to make inroads in the high-paying employment market. One is therefore hardly surprised to see that of the adult employed population, 70% immigrants from India are working in occupations focussing on management, business, science, and arts. In comparison, only 44% of immigrants from Pakistan ad 33% immigrants from Bangladesh are employed in similar occupations.

What Have We Learnt

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

In 1883, Emma Lazarus asked for the tired, the poor, and the wretched refuse. India instead sent its very best to the United States. Instead of the huddled masses, graduates from Indian Institutes of Technology and Management arrived in hundreds of thousands at the American shores. These immigrants were products of a sophisticated higher education system whose foundations were laid by Pandit Nehru in early fifties.

In the rest of South Asia, especially in Pakistan and Bangladesh, education has never been a national priority. The results of such conflicting priorities are obvious. Graduates from Indian universities are outdoing others in competitive labour markets at home and abroad.

If education is not made a national priority, the gap between Indians and other South Asians will grow at home and in diaspora.

References:

Helena Skyt Nielsen & Michael Rosholm & Nina Smith & Leif Husted, 2004. "Qualifications, discrimination, or assimilation? An extended framework for analysing immigrant wage gaps," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 855-883, December.

Alisher Aldashev & Johannes Gernandt & Stephan L. Thomsen, 2008. "The Immigrant Wage Gap in Germany," FEMM Working Papers 08019, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.