Higher Education Policy

Pilot Linking Degrees and Earnings Gets First Try at U Texas

Campus Technology: The first-year median earnings for an undergraduate who received his or her degree in health and physical education/fitness at the University of Texas at Austin is $39,441. The median debt for that individual is $24,306. After 10 years, the earnings reach $70,262. For an undergraduate who majored in computer and information sciences, the median income for year one is $85,334; the median debt is $27,644. By the tenth year the CS major would have a median income of $117,418.

That's the kind of detailed information that prospective students and their families would find helpful in sorting through college choices. Yet, a federal ban on student-level data collection has until now prevented close scrutiny of specific degree programs or majors as students move out of their original states.

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