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The prestigious Harvard University offers countless courses that make it possible to obtain a professional certificate for free, in just a few weeks and from the comfort of home.
Among so many, the “Data Science: Data Wrangling” stands out, which is part of its Professional Certificate Program. The course is taught online and over eight weeks, during which the student will learn to process and convert raw data into the formats needed for analysis.
The training is vital in a context in which there are more and more data and a growing number of companies that require analysis to drive progress.
How long does Harvard’s course last and what topics does it cover?
Harvard’s Data Science course lasts eight weeks. The expected time commitment is around one to two hours per week. However, the University clarifies that each student can take it “at their own pace”.
The course topics are:
- Importing data into R from different file formats.
- Web data extraction.
- How to sort data using tidyverse to make analysis easier.
- Text string processing with regular expressions (regex).
- Data processing with dplyr.
- How to work with dates and times as file formats and text mining.
What is the language, difficulty level, and course format?
Harvard teaches Data Science online, through the edX platform. The language is English and the difficulty is categorized as “Introductory”.
One of the instructors is Rafael Irizarry, Professor of Biostatistics, from the TH Chan School of Public Health.
How much does Harvard’s course cost?
The course offers two options:
- Auditor: it is free, includes participation from world-class institutions and edX support. It has limited access.
- HarvardX Certificate: costing $ 149, the course has unlimited access and includes graded assessments. Like Auditor, it includes participation from world-class institutions and edX support.
How do you sign up for Harvard Data Science?
Those interested in the course should go to https://www.edx.org/learn/data-science/harvard-university-data-science-wrangling
There they will have the option to choose between “Get a HarvardX Certificate” and “Auditor course”.
Is Data Science an increasingly sought-after job?
An analysis by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics produced a complete list of the fastest-growing occupations in 2025 and projected for 2035. The data are:
- Employment in 2025: 275,600 data scientists.
- Projected employment for 2035: 371,000.
- New jobs: 95,400.
- Projected growth: 34.6%.
- Median annual salary in 2025: US$120,230.
- Average job openings per year: 24,800.
The table places data scientists among the fastest-growing occupations in the United States over the next decade. It is worth noting that total employment across all occupations would grow by just 3.5% over the same period.
Along the same lines, Microsoft confirms that “the need for data science is growing rapidly as the amount of data increases exponentially and companies increasingly rely on analysis to drive revenue and innovation”.
A clear example is seen in business interactions, which are becoming more digital and data-rich. This, together with an analysis of the Data sector, makes it possible to obtain information on how to better personalize experiences, customer service and satisfaction; as well as develop new products and increase sales.