Hey Acromott,
I think it really depends on what your passion is. I was lucky enough to get engaged with data without a degree, and using data, figuring out the "best" way to build out data have been passion points of mine for as long as I can remember back to when my dad brought home our first "PC" in 1981-1982.

That being said, data definitely has a bright future, specifically in the ability to mine, to analyze, and to present it in a clear and understandable fashion. As a coworker reminded me the other day, very few people can natively understand a spreadsheet, but a well formatted presentation using data can be understood by all.

C++ is an extremely valuable tool, and often is the language used to communicate directly with "bare metal", as its use of memory, pointers and lower level syntax lend itself to extremely fast processing.

Either should be valuable - so go with what you LOVE to do.

My two cents. And thanks for the welcome!
-yukon