Dec 19, 2016 09:05 AM EST By Julio Cachila, UniversityHerald Reporter

Coding skills are in-demand right now and is believed to be the most coveted job skill of the future, according to a report by Fast Company. In fact, as many as 7 million job openings in 2015 required coding skills, says a report from Burning Glass, and programming jobs making use of such skills grow faster than other jobs in the market.

 Those who would desire to master coding and are hoping to acquire it from U.S. universities, however, might be surprised to know that the three best universities that produce the top coders are from different countries.

According to a University Rankings Competition held by coding skills ranking platform HackerRank, the top three best coders in the world are from:

• Russian Federation College, ITMO University in Russia (first);
• Sun Yat-sen Memorial Middle School in China (second); and
• Ho Chi Minh City University of Science in Vietnam (third).

Following the top three are the University of California, Berkeley, in the U.S. (fourth), and the University of Waterloo in Canada (fifth).

HackerRank based its rankings on a formula specially created for the competition. Universities were ranked based on the number of participants and high scores. Each university had at least 10 participating coders to make it to the leaderboard.

Russia made both first and sixth place. China's Sun Yat-sen Memorial Middle School (equivalent to U.S. high school education), on the other hand, surprisingly performed better than other universities including several American and Indian universities.

Coding skills are being used in various industries right now. While such skills are very useful for Information Technology (IT) workers, data analysts, artists and designers, engineers, and scientists, they are also useful in other fields outside of technology, such as finance, manufacturing, and health care.

Not only are these skills in-demand, jobs that require them also pay well. According to the Burning Glass report, such jobs "pay up to $22,000 per year more, on average." Almost half of jobs that pay not less than $58,000 also require coding skills.

HackerRank's findings imply that a university education isn't really needed to be able to code well, as in the case of Sun Yat-sen's ranking. Coupled with the knowledge that coding skills allow workers to earn more than other skills, maybe it would be a better alternative to burying one's self in student debt over a major that doesn't pay off as much.

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