Emails, Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of strategy, Cappex.com, May 9, 2016

12:21 p.m.

My debt at graduation data is attached. 

Note that the $21,000 figure is probably based on older TICAS data, but probably isn't too far off. 2015 TICAS data, which can be found at http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data-2015, has the average for all Texas at $26,250 and you can find the figures for individual colleges by clicking on Texas on the map. So, for an apples to apples comparison, you should probably use TICAS figures for both. Matt Reed can give you those figures.

The College Scorecard data includes just federal loans. It also is unclear whether they are still using median debt among all students enterring repayment (including both graduates and dropouts) or just the graduates.

Another data source is the FSA data center, which has annual federal disbursements by school. See https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/student/title-iv. While that isn't debt at graduation, I have used the data as a sanity check on other data sources, such as IPEDS and CDS. The former is government reported while the latter are institution reported. I suspect that some of the schools responding to the CDS survey are reporting inaccurate figures. Some may be reporting just need-based loans or averaging the debt among all graduates, not just students who graduated with debt.

Mark Kantrowitz

Publisher and VP of Strategy, Cappex.com

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Selby, Gardner (CMG-Austin) wrote:

Thanks. Your figures seem so much higher than others. I suspect this is because you draw on more debt sources?

??

G.

4:42 p.m.

CDS data tends to omit colleges with higher debt figures.

Mark Kantrowitz

Publisher and VP of Strategy, Cappex.com

5:35 p.m.

CDS = Common Data Set, the data set used by TICAS (as well as US News & World Report).

Mark Kantrowitz

Publisher and VP of Strategy, Cappex.com