New College awards first graduate degrees

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – For the first time in its 57-year history, New College of Florida will award graduate degrees to students on Friday.

The Sarasota-based college announced that seven students will earn master's degrees as the class of 2017 participates in commencement ceremonies.

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The students are earning their diplomas in New College's data-science program, which began in 2016 and represented the first time the small liberal arts honors college, which has about 875 students, had offered a graduate degree.

All seven graduates are heading to jobs, including four in Florida, the college said. Most of the students will work for companies where they interned as part the data-science program.

The program is limited to 15 students. They take classes on campus in the first year and then spend their second year working on and off campus with companies on data science projects.

Two students, who earned their baccalaureate degrees from New College, returned to the school to earn master's degrees.

“I knew how rapidly the field was changing, and that if I were to have any hope of survival, I would need to build a solid foundation in data science,” Philip Pope said in a statement released by the school. “So I came back to New College to do just that.”

Pope was working as a data scientist in Washington, D.C., when he decided to return to New College for his master's degree. His new job will be as a machine learning engineer with Clarifai, a New York City artificial intelligence company specializing in deep learning, the school said.

Data science jobs are among the highest paying in the economy, with New College citing a PayScale.com survey that pegged the median annual salary at $91,000 in the U.S.

Graduating more students with higher-paying data science jobs will help New College on a key state performance measure. , The college currently ranks last among the 12 schools in the state university system with a median post-graduation salary of $26,500, based on the 2014-15 academic year.

The seven master's graduates will join 174 undergraduates earning their baccalaureate degrees on Friday, with 40 percent of the students receiving degrees in science or mathematics fields, the college said.