Katherine Noyes

MIT's big-data education programs have involved numerous partners in the technology industry, including IBM, which began its involvement in big data education about four years ago.

IBM revealed to Fortune that it plans to expand its academic partnership program by launching new academic programs and new curricula with more than twenty business schools and universities, to begin in the fall. To date, IBM has invested more than $24 billion in R&D and acquisitions to build the company's capabilities around big data and analytics, and it employs about 15,000 consultants and 400 mathematicians to focus exclusively on the area.

Business analytics is now a nearly $16 billion business for the company, IBM says -- which might be why it is interested in cultivating partnerships with more than 1,000 institutions of higher education to drive curricula focused on data-intensive careers.

The W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University launched a Master of Science in Business Analytics degree in 2013 and is now adding a Bachelor of Science in Data Analytics program as well. ASU started its master's program small, with an initial cohort of five students last fall. It has matriculated 100 and is shooting for two groups of 50 by 2015. Meanwhile, the number of applications to the master's program has jumped from 159 in 2013 to 298 applications as of early May.

Invasive, pervasive, sometimes abrasive -- welcome to a world where businesses believe there to be value in "big data."

Though the field is nascent -- many businesses don't yet understand what data they have available to them, and even if they do, they may lack the resources to run sophisticated analytics on them -- it gained high-profile attention when the Obama Administration released its Big Data and Privacy Working Group Review.

"The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society," wrote John Podesta, counselor to the president, in his introduction to the report. "But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time."

Is the administration in line with the business community? Fortune asked a few experts to compare notes with the White House.

• Be discriminating. Many companies will need to get a better understanding of their data and how it's collected, added Mark Schreiber, a litigation partner with Edwards Wildman Palmer as well as chair of the firm's Privacy and Data Protection Steering Committee and chair for Privacy Matters at the World Law Group.
• Be transparent. Be open and honest with consumers about the data you collect and what you do with it, including how it's being kept secure, the White House cautions.
• Abide by the law(s). There are already numerous legal precedents regarding the use of personal data, Simkoff noted, so "don't be exploring conclusions or trying to do big data analysis queries in areas where there is legal precedent saying you shouldn't."
• Put privacy front and center. Privacy choices, preferences and features should be recognized and embedded early in product development through what Schreiber calls "privacy by design," a notion that "will become increasingly important and standardized," he said.
• Watch for opportunities. "Privacy along with big data will become a business in itself, with an increasing number of privacy and data protection jobs in corporations, government, healthcare, and education," Schreiber said. "Privacy training in companies -- which is rarely done other than where required, such as in industries like healthcare or financial services -- will become routine and commonplace."