DATA JOURNALISM

By Meredith Roberts | May, 2024

UT Austin graduates focused on business and sciences statistically have higher wages and a lower amount of borrowed loans, but a degree does not guarantee that every graduate will earn wages.

Texas CREWS is a joint project of the Texas Workforce Commission and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. According to Texas CREWS student debt data from 2021, across all colleges and degrees, the average loan amount at graduation was almost $30,000, and graduates with loans made up a little less than half of the student body. 

Student loans made up nearly half of a graduate's first-year wages, so if an average graduate made $50,000 In their first year after college, they would owe half that amount in student loans.

The general requirement for a bachelor's degree is 60 semester hours of coursework counted toward their specific focus, while master's degrees and doctoral degrees largely require 30 semester hours of advanced coursework and credit, give or take.

Not all UT Austin majors are represented by this data, and PHD is equivalent to doctorate/doctoral. Please click on the image to interact with the graph.

According to the average graduate loan graph, the expenses of different degrees of education are linear. The more an average student pursues higher education, the more they must borrow to accommodate it. 

In 2021, an average student who graduated with a doctoral degree at UT owed $50,000. The loan amount for a bachelor's degree was half that.

Although schooling is more expensive along higher degrees of education, degree levels at UT have different rates of graduates borrowing loans. According to the graph above of the precentage of students who take out loans, in 2021, nearly half of bachelor's degree holders borrowed student loans. Surprisingly, at the lowest rate, only around four out of 10 doctoral students borrowed loans in 2021.

Not all UT Austin majors are represented by this data, and PHD is equivalent to doctorate/doctoral. Please click on the image to interact with the graph.

Different majors and colleges at UT provide graduates with different resources. According to the above graph, the Cockrell School of Engineering, School of Nursing and McCombs School of Business lead the charge in the highest wages throughout bachelor's and master's degree programs. 

Consistently, on average, the College of Fine Arts and the College of Liberal Arts are on the lower end of the income scale throughout bachelor's to doctoral degree programs.

The Cockrell School of Engineering also serves as a unicorn because throughout bachelor's to doctorate programs, the school consistently produces graduates with lower loan amounts as well as high wages. In turn, the School of Nursing may display high wages, but in master's and doctoral degree programs, nursing graduates borrow more loans in comparison to students at other colleges.

Not all UT Austin majors are represented by this data, and PHD is equivalent to doctorate/doctoral. Please click on the image to interact with the graph.