Compared to other Texas schools, Texas Tech’s tuition is affordable.

In-state tuition at Texas Tech University is lower than other Texas schools such as Baylor, Rice and TCU. It is also lower than the average annual salary of Texas workers, unlike the universities mentioned above.

The Houston Chronicle recently did a comparison graph between several popular Texas universities. Southern Methodist University was very expensive, with tuition of about $62,000 a year. That’s twice what the average Texan earns annually. That sounds…ridiculous, but SMU is a private school and can charge whatever they want, I guess.

Tuition at Texas Tech is nearly $12,000 per year, which can still be a financial burden for students and the families they support (if those students even have that support). And as anyone who has attended college knows, tuition is the first cost of attending college.

Books and supplies cost the average college student between $628 and $1,471 per year. Unless the student lives with their parents, there are also high rent and utility costs. Students need to eat, get transportation, and live on a regular basis. It’s no wonder people leave college with huge student loan debt.

It made my older relatives and independents question how difficult it was to learn and stay in school. I know they despised me for how long it took me to graduate. It’s not exactly their fault that they didn’t realize how vastly different they were when they went to school:

Tuition and fees at private colleges have increased 1,900 percent since 1972. For public schools, the increase has been even greater.

This is why I strongly recommend two years of school before going to university. South Plains College, for example, costs about $4,000 a year for in-state tuition, or about one-third the cost of attending Texas Tech. In my opinion, going to a small junior college right out of high school is also a much less embarrassing experience. Going straight to a mainstream university can be overwhelming, especially when first-year classes have to take place in vast auditoriums with hundreds of students.

In addition to being more affordable than other schools, I have to say that Texas Tech is a fantastic university with amazing faculty and staff. I’m really biased; I got my degree in English from Texas Tech. If you see a grammatical error in this article, don’t blame Texas Tech (Editor’s note: to blame I!) They did their best when working with them.

Texas Tech specializes in meat science, mechanical engineering, and has impressive law and business schools, among many other award-winning departments with high job placement rates. It’s proof that the most expensive school isn’t necessarily the best, and certainly not the best for every student.