Academic Offer of Advanced Digital Skills in 2020-21. International Comparison. Focus on Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Cybersecurity and Data Science

The European Commission, as part of its policy to foster digital transformation and succeed in the digital decade, promotes digital skills as a key factor to improve economic competitiveness and social justice. This report provides evidence about the availability of higher education offer in Artificial intelligence, High performance computing, Cybersecurity, and Data science in the academic year 2020-2021, so as to anticipate possible gaps (or abundance) in their offer. Following a keyword-based query methodology that captures the inclusion of advanced digital skills in the programmes’ syllabus, we monitor the availability of masters’ programmes and study their characteristics, such as the scope (broad and specialised), education fields in which digital skills are taught (e.g., Information and communication technologies; Business, administration and law), and the content areas covered by the programmes. The EU’s offer of AI-related specialised master’s programmes is higher than that of the US. Even if the field of education dominating the offer of AI master’s programmes is Information and communication technologies, noticeable shares are also observed for Engineering, manufacturing and construction. In Cybersecurity, the EU is the only area presenting a positive trend during the last year, involving both broad and specialised masters. Despite this, still the EU’s related offer is lower than that of the US and that of the UK. Regarding Data science masters, the US keeps its leading position.