Data Science for Economic Development: A Sustainable Strategy

Abstract

Sustainable development has been in use for over three decades but with the establishment of the UN SDG 2030 goals in 2015, it has a renewed focus to understand the joint responsibility of all stakeholders towards the future of sustainable growth. The paper places emphasis on Education (Goal 4) and the use of Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (Goal 9) for the sustainable growth of education. Data-driven decision making plays a major role in this regard. As Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in the modern era strive to build resilience and develop innovation-led paths, the access to vast amounts of data at disposal has motivated HEIs to take data-driven decisions. Data science equipped with intelligent computational methods can produce advanced learning analytics for this purpose. More specifically, as HEIs become the backbone of many countries in producing future talent, much focus is placed on analysing educational data to identify what students want to learn and what content should be incorporated in an optimal curriculum. This is a contemporary review on sustainable development of education.