Russ Moore graduated from Ole Miss in 1999 and went directly into the U.S. Navy, rising to captain of a destroyer before heading to the Pentagon, where he became director of plans and strategy for the Fourth Fleet, based in Jacksonville.
“I got really interested in economics in about 2012. It seemed to be a lot more complicated than when I was going to school in the ’90s,” Moore said with a laugh.
After retiring from active duty, Moore, 49, started looking for a program that offered an online master’s degree as he considered the next phase of his career. He found that goal in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida, this fall joining the inaugural class of a new econometrics and data analysis program in the Department of Economics.
“The program definitely gives you a deep dive into the technical aspects of the field,” Moore said. “I needed to close some technical gaps that I had in my economic understanding, which this program is certainly doing. Very fortunate to learn so much this far.”
New state funding creates opportunity
The Department of Economics moved from the Warrington College of Business to CLAS in 2014. Department Chair Thomas Knight noticed that “4+1” programs, which allow undergraduates to move directly to a master’s degree with one additional year on campus — a popular option at Warrington, were absent in CLAS.
“I think there were solid academic and professional reasons for participating in them, and there is also a desire among a lot of students to spend an extra year in Gainesville,” Knight said.
“The idea was to develop more robust quantitative technical training that they could then take to the job market when they graduated,” Knight said.
With four additional faculty positions available through new funding from the state Legislature, intended to accelerate UF’s rise to a top-five institution, Knight was able to start the “4+1” program in econometrics and data analysis. In late spring 2024, with support from university administration and the Board of Governors, Knight secured approval to expand further with a one-year, online master’s program.
After another year of curriculum development, the first 20 students
were admitted and began their one-year, online path to a master’s degree in econometrics and data analysis this fall.
“This provides access to this valuable credential to students who are a bit older, who don’t have the ability to relocate to Gainesville, or who don’t want to step back from their careers. These are working professionals around the state and even the country,” Knight said. “As it turns out, this cohort is a pretty heterogeneous group.”
The program’s curriculum prepares students for jobs in economic analysis and consulting at large accounting firms and corporations, banking and finance, public policy and positions in government agencies like the Federal Reserve. The median starting pay in these jobs is over $70,000, with some new graduates landing positions that pay up to twice that amount.
Compared with average salaries of those entering the workforce with a bachelor’s degree, that’s enough to recoup the $18,000 cost of the program in just a year or two.
Major advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning were taking place just as the master’s programs were being developed, so big data was baked in. “We were able to design a curriculum that had data front and center from the very inception,” Knight said.
Training a highly skilled workforce
“A program like this plays an important role in workforce training for the state of Florida. In the residential program, we’re graduating about 20 to 25 students each year. We’ll graduate 20 students next year in the online program, which over the next few years might grow to 50 students. They will have a highly employable, very technical degree. The overwhelming majority of those students are looking for jobs here in Florida.”
Jonathan Munoz earned his bachelor’s degree in 2017, majoring in economics within CLAS, and then returned to UF through the part-time South Florida MBA program in 2023. He joined the accounting firm KPMG and is currently a manager of transfer pricing. Munoz and his Miami-based team help companies evaluate the tax implications of cross-border intercompany transactions. In recent years, Munoz’s team has hired at least two UF econometrics graduates, with other teams at KPMG bringing on several more. “They bring the soft skills, like thinking broadly and problem solving, but also the hard, analytical skills that the program emphasizes. That includes economic principles, but also the ability to analyze economic data and economic modeling. That’s really appreciated in our field,” Munoz said.
“Being part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences gives them a broader education than they might otherwise have gotten in an economics program. We do a lot of interviews with clients, and we really need to understand their businesses in a holistic way,” he said.
