Cha-ching
This is the average starting salary for University of Texas at Austin graduates
As the state's flagship university, the University of Texas at Austin is used to raking in accolades for academics, programs, and, naturally, athletics. But a new ranking of the best starting salaries for Texas grads shows UT students are raking in a lot more than superlatives once they enter into the workforce.
Financial website SmartAsset ranked the top 10 Texas colleges where students earn the best average starting salaries upon graduation. Coming in at No. 5, UT students command an average starting salary of $56,900. In the top spot, Rice University grads earn an average of $65,700 in their first job out of school.
The salary ranking is part of a larger SmartAsset study that looked at five factors (tuition, student living costs, scholarship and grant offerings, retention rate, and starting salary) to determine the best value colleges and universities. UT comes in No. 3 on that list. Longhorns pay an average of $9,806 tuition and $16,516 in living costs which is offset by an average of $10,023 in scholarships and grants.
These findings come in an era where students are taking on staggering amounts of debt vs. future income. The average annual growth rate for the cost to attend a four-year university between 1989 and 2016 was 2.6 percent per year, compared to a low 0.3 percent annual growth in wages, according to SmartAsset.
Here is the breakdown of the 10 Texas schools with the highest starting salaries:
- Rice University, Houston, $65,700
- The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, $60,000
- The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, $57,800
- Texas A&M University, College Station, $57,200
- The University of Texas, Austin, $56,900
- LeTourneau University, Longview, $55,300
- Southern Methodist University, Dallas, $55,000
- Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, $54,300
- The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, $53,600
- Texas Tech University, Lubbock, $49,375
