Honestly, I don't think that it's a bad thing at all to require a Masters/PhD as a prerequisite for being a data scientist. There are too many people in this f

Honestly, I don't think that it's a bad thing at all to require a Masters/PhD as a prerequisite for being a data scientist. There are too many people in this field who just run data through a library in the most obvious way and when it doesn't work they're out of ideas because they don't understand what happens inside the library. They're ruining it for the rest of us, because they're undermining the credibility of the whole field. Using a library is something you can learn over the course of a vacation by working through a book or tutorial. But understanding what happens inside the library is something that you will never just pick up on the job. You do need actual time, actual training, and interaction with people who already understand this sort of thing very well over the course of many months or years.