[geebee]

I know a lot of "research programmers" (meaning people who write code in research labs but are not themselves the researchers or investigators on a study), and they often have MS degrees in CS - though actually, highly quantitative masters degrees where very elaborate code is used to generate answers is a bit more common than CS per se (math, operations research, branches of engineering, bioinformatics, etc).

Here's the thing - in industry, this background (quant undergrad + MS, high programming ability, industry experience) is kind of the gold standard for data science jobs. In academic job ladders it's... hmm. Here's the thing - by the latest data, MS grads in these fields from top programs are starting at between 120k-160k in industry, and there are very good opportunities for growth.

I actually think that universities and research centers can compete with highly in demand workers in spite of lower salaries, but highly talented people in demand will not turn away an industry job with salary and advancement potential to remain in a dead end job.