While there is plenty of information available from a variety of sources, it is difficult for high school students to make informed decisions on picking a college, a degree, and even a potential job field when the challenge to compare potential earnings and job availability is extreme.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation released a new tool designed to quickly display earnings and student debt for recent college graduates. The tool allows users to customize for different fields and undergraduate and post graduate degrees, allowing for students to make informed decisions when choosing a degree, a school, and even a career.
The database, containing information on annual earnings, debt as a percentage of those earnings, and a performance rating based on that percentage, brings transparency to tuition rates for each university and provides student with the true costs and benefits for their chosen major and profession.
“The underlying U.S. Department of Education data, which this tool tries to make more user-friendly, holds the potential to revolutionize higher education in two ways,” said Andrew Gillen, senior analyst for TPPF’s Next Generation Texas initiative.
“First, for the first time, students and parents can make truly informed enrollment decisions. Second, this data reveals that federal and state governments should do much more to hold colleges that leave their students with excessive debt accountable.”
Check out the tool here.
