<p>@PurpleTitan I had seen the news about A&M salaries reported various times including in the Houston news, but just looked up the data again. Surprisingly A&M leads all but Rice and Vanderbilt (not just UT) in the region in both “mid career” (15 years in) and in starting salary according to the 2014 reports generated by PayScale. See <a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-region/central-south”>http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-region/central-south</a>. I have also talked with recruiters who have made similar points about A&M.</p>
<p>The more amazing thing is that Texas A&M and UT are even close in salaries (obviously even more surprising that Texas A&M is higher in some measures of salaries) given the significant difference in admissions (top 7% cutoff at UT for most admits vs. much lower threshold for A&M).</p>
<p>I don’t know the reasons and haven’t attended either, but it is a fascinating comparison since the two schools have multiple similarities (size, cost, region, graduation percentages etc.). The obvious reasons (A&M is more engineering for example) don’t work since A&M and UT have similar percentages engineers and even similar overall graduation rates and sizes, and Austin area itself has higher salaries (where UT is) than other cities in the state.</p>
<p>Similar comparisons in other states (UCLA vs. Berkeley, William and Mary vs. UVa and Colorado School of Mines vs. Boulder) don’t match up as cleanly as UT vs. A&M but might also be sources of useful objective data on comparison of practices that work well in education.</p>