First, we recommend exploring the tools from left to right as seen on the Resource Center landing page:

1. Where are the Well-Paying Jobs? is our data dashboard that provides snapshots of Career Areas (i.e. industry groups or “clusters”) and the occupations contained within. Data can be filtered by region and/or desired education level and sorted by early career or median salary, typical education needed for an occupation, growth rate percentage or job demand (re: projected available job openings). All occupations featured in this and all of our tools must meet the NGT wage threshold for well-paying jobs at entry into the workforce to be included. More information on the threshold is available below.

2. Texas Navigator is our directory of curated programs of study across our serviced regions in Texas. Each program of study aligns with the occupations found in our Where are the Well-Paying Jobs tool to clearly connect the labor market to postsecondary options. Programs in the directory must meet the NGT standard for high-value programs. Currently, Texas Navigator focuses on Associate, Certificate, Professional License, and Apprenticeship programs with development of our Bachelor’s degree content beginning in 2025. More information on what types of programs are included in the directory can be found below.

3. We like to call our Postsecondary Advising Guides (PAGs) “advising guardrails”. With so much information out there on various occupations and postsecondary options, it can easily become overwhelming to ingest. Some PAGs focus on specific career areas and summarize the most useful information to have when considering education-to-career options including common admissions expectations, steps toward professional licensing, employers hiring for the most needed occupations, and suggestions for programs of study to explore. Our Bachelor’s career-focused degree PAGs streamline the most critical postsecondary access information such as what scores and grades are needed to increase chances of admission to any given public institution in Texas or what classes need to be taken in high school to be application-ready for the most competitive programs in Business or Engineering.

All of our resources and tools use the following data sources to maintain consistency across our content to simplify your consumption and understanding:

• For Wage, Occupational Projection, and Job Growth Rate Percentage data we use a combination of the latest Texas Labor Market and Career Information (LMCI) job projection data and LMCI Occupational and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data for the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA, Austin-Round Rock MSA, San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA, and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington MSA, respectively (currently from the May 2025 data set)

• For Distribution of Employment by Education Level data we use the most recent O*NET Education, Training and Experience (currently from the data set Aug 2004 to Dec 2024)

• All of our data is analyzed, cleaned and organized to present the clearest picture of an occupation in a concise manner for counselors, advisors, students and families

Salary data is updated annually in alignment with Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting.

State-level projected job growth data is updated when new data is released by the state (typically once every two years).

In this tool, a well-paying job refers to one that pays at least 80% of the median salary for all workers in a selected region. This indicator for each serviced region in Texas is:

• Houston: $38,794

• Dallas: $39,792

• Austin: $42,087

• San Antonio: $36,808

A career area refers to a broad field of work. Occupations within career areas may share similar job tasks, interests, and skill sets.

Early-career salary represents the lower end of the salary range for the occupation (i.e., the 25th-percentile salary for the occupation). Typically, workers will earn a salary at the 25th-percentile or higher after a few years of experience in the field.

Median salary is the middle point of all salaries within an occupation within a selected region. Half of the workers in the occupation make less than the median salary, and half make more. Typically, workers will earn the median salary or higher in an occupation after accumulating several years of experience.

This is the level of education or training typically needed to enter an occupation and, per NGT Texas parameters, must represent at least 15% of the net jobs available for that occupation.

“Vocational Jobs” approximates the number of people working in the occupation with an Associate’s degree, vocational certificate, professional license or other credential that is not a Bachelor’s or Graduate degree.

“Bachelor’s Jobs” approximates the number of people working in the occupation with a Bachelor’s degree.

“Graduate Jobs” approximates the number of people working in the occupation with a graduate degree.

The typical education required to enter some occupations may fall into more than one credential level. For example, some Registered Nurses get jobs with an Associate’s degree and others with a Bachelor’s degree.

Data for all of our tools comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Texas Labor Market and Career Information. The specific citations for the data used in this tool are:

• Texas LMI's Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS) for Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands MSA, data benchmarked to 2024

• Texas LMI's Occupational Projections for Gulf Coast Workforce Development Area from 2022 to 2032

• Texas LMI's Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS) for Dallas-Plano-Irving Metropolitan Division, data benchmarked to 2024

• Texas LMI's Occupational Projections for Dallas-Fort Worth MSA (Dallas, Tarrant, and North Central) from 2022 to 2032

• Texas LMI's Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS) for San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA, data benchmarked to 2024

• Texas LMI's Occupational Projections for Alamo from 2022 to 2032

• Texas LMI's Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS) for Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA, data benchmarked to 2024

• Texas LMI's Occupational Projections for Capital Area (Travis County) and Rural Capital (counties surrounding Travis County) from 2022 to 2032

• O*NET file "Education, Training, and Experience" from 2004 to 2024

Texas Navigator includes a broad range of programs to meet students’ varied career interests. It includes Associate degree and Certificate programs of study like HVAC and Radiology, as well as apprenticeships in building trades and technology. Texas Navigator also includes detailed information that cannot be found publicly on ways to save money or obtain additional value as informed by people recruiting for and leading the programs of study for their respective institutions.

Texas Navigator currently focuses on programs offered by two-year public colleges, community organizations and other public entities like Education Service Centers which are generally more affordable than similar programs offered by for-profit training schools or through Continuing Education programs offered at two- and four-year colleges and universities. Development of four-year (Bachelor’s degree) content has begun in 2025 to be launched later this year.

To be included in Texas Navigator, the program needs to meet the following criteria:

• Focus on a well-defined set of target occupations that typically require completion of a specific vocational program or degree. Liberal arts and social science degrees such as English or Sociology are not included because these programs do not prepare graduates for specific occupations. Similarly, natural science degrees such as Biology or Chemistry are not included. However, degrees in Allied Health Science, which prepare students for national certification exams to work in hospitals and other medical laboratories, are included.

• Target occupations that pay a living wage. All NGT resources, including Texas Navigator, use a calculation of 80% of the Median Wage for all occupations in a region as a benchmark for a well-paying job at entry into the workforce. At time of publishing, this indicator for each serviced region in Texas is:

  • Houston: $38,794

  • Dallas: $39,792

  • Austin: $42,087

  • San Antonio: $36,808

• Programs of study with target occupations significantly below this threshold, such as Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training programs, are not included in the Texas Navigator directory at this time.

• Be a good next step for high school graduates. Coding boot camps such as General Assembly and App Academy, which typically serve students who have either graduated college or have significant computer-related experience, are not included in Texas Navigator. For similar reasons, graduate programs are not included in Texas Navigator unless they are a combined Bachelor’s/Graduate option. Most pre-apprenticeship programs will also be excluded unless there is a significant work-based learning element embedded in the program with a direct connection to employment in a Target Occupation that meets the NGT wage criterion.

Texas Navigator currently focuses on programs located in the four largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in Texas: Dallas (Dallas-Fort Worth Arlington MSA), Houston (Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands MSA), San Antonio (San Antonio-New Braunfels MSA), and Austin (Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA). Programs with shared geography or that exist statewide are included as appropriate and labeled accordingly.

As NGT continues to develop its content and partnerships, additional regions and their respective programs will be added. In some cases, programs training toward high demand occupations but offered outside a currently served region may be included for relevance to the market need. For example, the Utility Line Technology program at Lamar Institute of Technology in the East Texas Region is included as one of only three programs currently available in Texas Navigator even though its location in Silsbee, Texas is about 90 minutes from Houston.

You can browse Career Areas by clicking on the tiles on the main Texas Navigator landing page. Once you select a Career Area, you will see the various Programs of Study (e.g., Construction Management, Real Estate, Registered Nursing, etc.) with available programs in a region. When you click on a Program of Study, you will see an overview of the type of content you will learn, a summary of common certifications and/or licenses needed for employment and a snapshot of target occupations associated with that Program of Study. At the bottom of this screen you can then click the blue button to see what institutions offer programs in this area.

From the main landing page you can also Keyword Search using the search toolbar. Just type in words like “Mechanic” or “Business” to filter the Career Area tiles to those with this keyword present in their Programs of Study.

Finally, there are several filters you can use to search for programs:

• Degree / Credential

• Target Occupation

• Institution (e.g., Houston City College)

• Region

To see the filter options, simply click on the three bar icon directly to the right of the search toolbar.

• Texas Navigator includes a wide variety of postsecondary programs to meet students’ diverse career interests and needs. These programs include apprenticeships, certificates, 2-year college, civil service job training (e.g., firefighter cadet programs), 4-year college and combined undergraduate/graduate programs, and job training programs offered by community-based organizations.

• Each program in Texas Navigator is assessed by the NGT team to ensure that it offers a good return on investment for students, meaning that  we can verify the training/education prepares students for a well-paying job. Because we also reach out to every program in our directory at least once a year, our information is current; and, because of this regular contact, programs often share updates and “hidden gem” information to include in their respective directory listings. This can include things like best practices for admissions, financial aid opportunities, and information on embedded industry-based credentials.

• Our regional wage benchmarks and target occupation wage data are sourced and updated at least once per year with the most current data that is in alignment with our Where are the Well-Paying Jobs? data dashboard, so that the information you see in one of our resources or tools is the same in the others. Consistency provides clarity.

All NGT resources use a calculation of 80% of the Median Wage for all occupations in a region as a benchmark for a well-paying job at entry into the workforce. At time of publishing, this indicator for each serviced region in Texas is:

• Houston: $38,794

• Dallas: $39,792

• Austin: $42,087

• San Antonio: $36,808

We use this approach to determine our wage threshold as we have found it consistently provides a wage within a reasonable range similar to other living wage calculations and applications, such as the MIT Living Wage Calculator, and we can track and measure our data comparatively year over year.

NextGen Talent’s goal is to boost the enrollment of students from low-income households, including students of color and first-generation college students (who are disproportionately from low-income households) in postsecondary programs and majors that lead to well-paying jobs. These students do not have the same financial safety nets as their peers from higher-income households; therefore, it is critical that they can identify postsecondary programs and career paths with strong labor market returns.

Websites including O*NET OnLine, MyNextMove, and Occupational Outlook Handbook are helpful to explore a variety of occupations with different pay levels. 

Other Useful Resources

MIT Living Wage Calculator

Texas Reality Check Lifestyle Calculator

Texas Internship Challenge

My Texas Future

Your postsecondary education is one of the greatest and sometimes largest investments you will make in life. As with anything you purchase - car, house, etc. - you want to make sure that there is a return on investment. This means that the amount that you pay for credential attainment isn’t 1) greater than the amount you will earn post-graduation and/or 2) doesn’t leave you with a significant debt burden.

To better assess our schools and programs in their return on investment criteria, we developed a system that calculates what we call Return on Education (ROE). Utilizing the metrics outlined below, we calculated a comparable “GPA”-like score (between 1-5), which corresponds to a particular school or program’s ROE. The data in this formula was sourced from: Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), College Scorecard, Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), University websites directly, and Poets & Quants.

These data points serve as the determinants for ROE GPA:

• 6-year Graduation Rate

  • On-time graduation/credential attainment connects to both time and money for students. Schools with a high graduation rate present a stronger likelihood that a student will complete their credential and graduate. Schools with a low graduation rate also equate with a high attrition rate and provide a lower likelihood of successful credential attainment.

• 1-2 year Retention Rate

  • Like graduation rate, retention rate corresponds to the likelihood that a student will or will not graduate from a particular program. Retention rate is defined as the percentage of students who return to the same college/program in the fall of their second year. Retention rates act as a litmus test of sorts, providing a strong indication if students tend to succeed in a program or drop out. Like graduation rates, this represents both time and money. Investing in a program or school where there is a strong likelihood that a student will not return to a second year, can be considered a serious gamble, particularly where the reasons for attrition are unknown. The most common reasons for attrition are inability to meet the financial costs of education, falling behind academically, socioemotional pressures, or a combination of all three. 

• Average Loans Accepted (over 4 years)

  • Loans are not just money, but interest. The amount of loans offered to students directly correlates to the willingness of a college/university or program to make it affordable to students. Students should strive to take out as few loans as possible, and those should have the lowest interest possible. Generally, you should not take out more than the federally offered $5,500/year. In other circumstances, we recommend taking out a maximum of $10,000/year in loans, and this is only if there are extenuating factors where there is no other more affordable college or programmatic option and/or you have a specific plan to pay off this debt as quickly as possible. Generally, schools that offer at or less than the federally offered $5,500/year are ideal and those that offer between $5,501 and $10,000/year are acceptable. Offers of $10,001 or above should be decided on a case-by-case basis; however, for most students taking out over $15,000/year is not recommended.

•  Average Grants/Scholarships Awarded (over 4 years)

  • Directly opposite of Loans, you want this to be as high as possible (taking into account the cost of attendance). Naturally, more expensive private schools will typically give out more in grants and scholarships. 

• Average % of Cost of Attendance in Loans

  • This is another direct metric related to cost. The percent of the Cost of Attendance offered in loans, again, relates to the school/program’s willingness to provide affordable tuition for students without leaving graduates in a ton of debt. You want this number to be as low as possible as you want the proportion of grants/scholarships offered to be higher. 

• Average Gap per Year (Cost-of-Attendance - (Avg. Loan + Avg. G/S)

  • This relates to the amount of money, on average, students will pay out of pocket. This changes for each student as their need indicated in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and Texas Application for State Financial Aid (TASFA) are different. Again, you want this average gap to be as low as possible. 

• Average Employment within 3 months of graduation

  • This metric is related to outcomes. A credential is only as good as the career it leads to. The higher the employment rate, the higher the likelihood that you will be gainfully employed within 3 months of graduation.

• Average Post-Graduate Income (Initial post-Graduate income)

  • Income is a critical component of this ROE. What does the average graduate make upon graduation? In many cases, we can isolate this to a particular program - Business graduates vs. Education vs. Engineering, etc. This way you see the ways in which majors impact earning potential. This number does not equate with earning potential, but instead focuses on entry-level salaries.