The Kansas Board of Regents unveiled a new interactive online tool on Wednesday that will help students and parents understand the cost of college in Kansas and compare programs.
The new website, Kansas DegreeStats (ksdegreestats.org), displays the specific costs of each undergraduate degree program offered at public institutions in Kansas, and the earnings those graduates are making today.
The new website comes as the Kansas Legislature begins requiring a “degree prospectus” to be published for each post-secondary degree program in Kansas.
The comprehensive cost and earnings data can be used to search for degree programs within a public university or for a side-by-side comparison of a specific program across universities.
Kansas Board of Regents Communication Director Breeze Richardson says the state collected two years’ worth of data from real graduates to get this unique interactive tool started.
"There is nowhere in the country that you can get both the cost as it was actually experienced by graduates and earnings data from those same degree programs," she says. "There are only six states besides Kansas that publish earnings data by degree program—none of them include cost information experienced by those graduates. Only Texas includes projected costs."
Information from the state’s seven public universities is online now. Community and technical colleges will be added for the 2017 school year.
Richardson says each institution will be required to include the DegreeStats information on their websites and in printed materials.
State law will require annual updates, so the information stays current.
An example of the type of results an average user might get on ksdegreestats.org:
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