A new specialization that seeks to address the shortage of professionals with data analytical skills has just launched on the Coursera platform. It comprises three courses from SAS taking students from complete beginner to being ready to earn a SAS credential that is recognized across many industries.

There are three courses in the SAS Programming Specialization, but only two of them are currently available. The third one gives students the opportunity to use the skills you acquired in the first two SAS programming courses to solve realistic problems. It is also designed to give you a thorough review of SAS programming concepts so you are prepared to take the SAS Certified Specialist: Base Programming Using SAS 9.4 Exam. 

To be eligible to join this course you first need to complete Getting Started with SAS® Programming which it at introductory level and is for users who want to learn how to write SAS programs to access, explore, prepare, and analyze data. The material  requires about 23 hours to complete but is arranged into four Weeks. It is a highly practical and provides you with access to SAS programming tools, either in the cloud or downloaded to a virtual machine. You are guided through setting up the software as part of the first module in Week 1 and after this there are plenty of practical exercises to complete.

Doing More with SAS Programming is another 4-week course (28 hours in total). At intermediate level, it builds on the concepts from the beginner-level course and covers data manipulation techniques using the SAS DATA step and procedures to access, transform, and summarize data.

Given the level of demand for data analytics skills, paying a subscription of $79 per month to access all the materials in the Specialization seems like a worthwhile investment. However,  given how quickly students seem to be able to complete the courses it might be worth waiting until all three are available.

More Information

SAS Programming Specialization

Getting Started with SAS® Programming

Doing More with SAS Programming

Coursera and SAS Bridge Analytics Skills Gap with New SAS® Programming Specialization

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