Morning Coffee: The new top courses for the new top jobs in finance. 23 year-old raises $22m VC fund

If you want the best jobs in finance today, you may not want to do a CFA or an MBA. In fact, as someone who left a comment on a recent article pointed out, these qualifications could actually be detrimental to your career by making you seem more expensive than everyone else. No, if you want to be love-bombed by recruiters now, you need to do one of the emerging courses in data science.

We've alluded to courses for data scientists before, but it's worth mentioning them again in light of a big Bloomberg article on "super quants."  The quants in question are the data scientists, a term incidentally defined by Dhanurjay “DJ” Patil at LinkedIn in 2008 when he was advertising a new kind of job.

For the moment, data scientists are a motley crew, spanning feeble Python coders who don't make the grade to full-blown machine learning specialists who do. Although the University of California Berkeley has an MSc in business analytics and Columbia has a masters in computer science with a focus on machine learning, Bloomberg says there aren't many courses specifically devoted to data scientists. - But this is about to change, a lot.

Next month, NYU is starting a PhD program in data science. In 2018, Harvard is starting a data science masters program. MIT is preparing a PhD that will encompass data science. Columbia's soon launching a data science PhD. Yale’s all-new Department of Statistics and Data Science, unveiled in March in 2017, will grant degrees. Brown University has started a data science program. The University of Washington will soon follow.

Universities' enthusiasm for data science is similar to their enthusiasm for Masters in Finance courses ten years ago. They've clearly scented a new stream of revenues and are determined to jump in. If you're a prospective student, the question is which course is best? Columbia has form, but will it be overtaken by MIT and Yale? For the moment, there are no league tables and no way of knowing.

Prospective students wondering which course to take can console themselves with the thought that the course itself may make little difference to their ability. Patil tells Bloomberg that the best data scientists are untrained in the area. “Some of the best data scientists I know have no real classic training,” he says. “There are great data scientists who come from everywhere. It’s how you pick up the skills and apply your knowledge to that.”

Separately, forget slogging 80 hours a week for £50 an hour.  Meet the 23 year-old home educated New Zealand woman who's got a $22m VC fund dedicated to the science of aging.  "When I started fundraising, I was 17 — too young to legally sign contracts. I’d never managed money before," says Laura Deming, who's moved to Silicon Valley and has attracted investment from the likes of Peter Thiel.

Meanwhile:

BofA's Italian head of equities wants to be in Frankfurt after Brexit. It's Iranian and American heads of fixed income want to be in Paris. (Bloomberg) 

An international school in Frankfurt has already hosted nine delegations of banks thinking of sending children there.  Delegations typically consisted of senior bankers and human resources executives. (Bloomberg) 

Average pay per head at UBS's new European business based in Frankfurt is $152k. (Bloomberg) 

Bloomberg's setting up a new data consulting business that will use terminal data to inform brand consulting, corporate communications and marketing strategy advice. (Financial Times) 

It's a great time to be in CLOs. (Bloomberg) 

Credit Suisse hired two technology bankers from Barclays in San Francisco. (Reuters) 

London family offers $129k and use of Maserati to elite nanny with no children of own and a degree in child psychology. (Business Insider) 

Use this simple test to find out if the eclipse has blinded you. (Guardian)  

More intelligent people are quicker to learn and unlearn social stereotypes. (BPS) 

Mystery cake baking banker of Canary Wharf. (The Sun) 

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: Escalator by Stew Dean is licensed under CC BY 2.0.