University of Houston
University of Houston is located in Houston, Texas. It is a public, 4-year or above institution.
From Wikipedia: The University of Houston ( ; HEW-stən) is a public research university in Houston, Texas. It was established in 1927 as Houston Junior College, a coeducational institution and one of multiple junior colleges formed in the first decades of the 20th century. In 1934, HJC was restructured as a four-year degree-granting institution and renamed as the University of Houston. In 1977, it became the founding member of the University of Houston System. Today, Houston is the fourth-largest university in Texas, awarding 11,156 degrees in 2023. As of 2024, it has a worldwide alumni base of 331,672. The university consists of fifteen colleges and an interdisciplinary honors college offering some 310-degree programs and enrolls approximately 37,000 undergraduate and 8,600 graduate students. The university’s campus, which is primarily in southeast Houston, spans 894 acres (3.62 km2), with the inclusion of its two instructional sites located in Sugar Land and Katy. The university is also the founding campus of the University of Houston System. The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity” and spends approximately $240 million annually in research. The university operates more than 35 research centers and institutes on campus in areas such as superconductivity, space commercialization and exploration, biomedical sciences and engineering, energy and natural resources, and artificial intelligence. The university has more than 500 student organizations and 17 intercollegiate sports teams. Its varsity athletic teams, known as the Houston Cougars, are members of the Big 12 Conference and compete in the NCAA Division I in all sports. In 2021, the university received and accepted an invitation to join the Big 12 Conference. The football team regularly makes bowl game appearances, and the men’s basketball team has made 23 appearances in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament—including six Elite Eight and Final Four appearances. The men’s golf team has won 16 national championships—the most in NCAA history. In 2022, UH’s men’s track and field team earned its seventh Indoor Conference Championship title, and its swimming and diving team defended its American Athletic Conference title for the sixth straight season.
Notes
These are items that bear looking into more closely.
- This institution’s six year bachelors graduation rate is 63.1%, so approximately 2/5 of undergrads who enroll do not earn a bachelors degree from here.
Overview of institution
This, and the rest of the page, use info from the most recent year available, generally 2023.
Institution kind: Doctoral Universities: Very High Research Activity
Undergrad program: Professions plus arts & sciences, high graduate coexistence
Graduate program: Research Doctoral: Comprehensive programs, no medical/veterinary school
Enrollment profile: High undergraduate (see more details below)
Average net price for undergrads on financial aid: $14,056 . This is 70% the average cost of Harvard.
Actual price for your family: Go here to see what your family may be asked to pay. It can be MUCH lower than the average price but also higher for some.
Size and setting: Four-year, large, primarily nonresidential
In state percentage: 93% of first year students come from Texas
In US percentage: 96% of first year students come from the US
Graduation rate (within 6 years) for students seeking a Bachelors: 63.1% (this is what is usually reported as “graduation rate”)
Graduation rate (within 4 years) for students seeking a Bachelors: 39.2%
Percent of students seeking a Bachelors who transfer out of this institution: 7.8%
Student to tenure-stream faculty ratio: 27.0 (undergrads to tenure-stream faculty) [Tenure explained]
Student to faculty ratio: 20.4 (undergrads to all faculty)
Degrees offered: Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, Doctor’s degree: research scholarship, Doctor’s degree: professional practice
Schedule: Semester
Institution provides on campus housing: Yes
Dorm capacity: There are enough dorm beds for 8397 students
Freshmen required to live on campus: No
Advanced placement (AP) credits used: Yes
Disabilities: 3.38 percent of undergrads are registered as having disabilities.
Map
Comparisons
The sections below show this institution compared with others. The ones listed are ones it has identified as peers, who consider themselves peers, and/or who the federal government considers peers. If a comparison school has the same value as the focal school, its cell is grayed out. In fields where there is a common view that higher (or lower) values are better, the best values are in blue, the worst values are in red. If there isn’t a sense of a particular value being better, values are shown in varying shades of green. Arrows show where there is a signficant trend over time for a school. You can swipe across the table to see more of it; the focal school column is always visible.
- University of Houston lists these schools as ones to compare itself within federal IPEDS data, and they do the same back: University of Central Florida, Florida International University, Texas Tech University, Georgia State University, University of Cincinnati-Main Campus, Wayne State University, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, The University of Texas at Arlington
- University of Houston compares itself to these institutions, but not vice versa: University of South Florida, University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus, Arizona State University Campus Immersion, Temple University, University of Illinois Chicago, University of North Texas, George Mason University, The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Texas at El Paso
- These institutions compare themselves to University of Houston, but not vice versa: Brigham Young University, Florida State University, San Diego State University, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, California State University-Fullerton, Iowa State University, The University of Alabama, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of St Thomas, University at Albany, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Texas State University, Kent State University at Kent, University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Missouri-St Louis, The University of Texas at San Antonio, CUNY Queens College, Northern Arizona University, Missouri State University-Springfield, University of New Mexico-Main Campus, University of Akron Main Campus, University of Massachusetts-Boston, California State University-San Bernardino, DeVry University-Texas, Cleveland State University, University of Memphis, CUNY Graduate School and University Center, Claremont Graduate University
Enrollment
General
Teaching
Tenure track faculty are those who are eligible for tenure. This includes both pre-tenure and tenured faculty. Once faculty get tenure, they are (generally) protected from being fired for intellectual reasons, helping to ensure their freedom in teaching and research. They can still lose their positions for misconduct, financial problems, not fulfilling their duties, or other reasons.
Non-tenure track faculty are not eligible for tenure. Some are hired one semester at a time, some have multi-year contracts. They typically have a higher teaching load than tenure track faculty, leaving less time for research or other creative endeavors. They are also easier to fire than tenured faculty. Sometimes they are external experts (a noted musician, a former senator) who are hired to teach some classes without the expected permanence of a tenure-track position.
Note that this chart uses US federal demographic data: it only has two genders and a specified set of ethnicities and races.
Having a low student to faculty ratio is considered a good thing by many, as it can mean more individual attention.
Geography
This has information on the location of the institution. See the about page for more information on what the metrics are and how they are calculated.
Financial Aid
Graduation
Note these are bachelors graduation rates in six years, not four (this is standard). Sample sizes can be small for some demographic groups with few individuals in a school, leading to large year-to-year fluctuations and often extreme values for those groups (if there are two individuals in the class with a given identity, the possible graduation rates are 0%, 50%, or 100% depending on whether zero, one, or both students graduate within six years).
Library
Libraries are changing rapidly. Note that how institutions count digital collections may vary.
Diversity
The US Census Bureau has a diversity index that goes from 0 to 1. In their words, “A 0-value indicates that everyone in the population has the same racial and ethnic characteristics. A value close to 1 indicates that everyone in the population has different racial and ethnic characteristics.” This uses their formula, but with the resolution available for the federal IPEDS data (which does not separate for a given demographic group whether members identify as Hispanic or not). This metric is about heterogeneity within the population, not the proportion of the population that comes from historically excluded groups.
Following the practice of the census, the index is multiplied by 100 to give the percentage probability a random pair of individuals will have a different background. Most institutions argue that diversity is a benefit, so by default a higher number is listed as better, but there may be cases where this measure does not reflect the mission of a college (for example, 70% of the students at a tribal college or university may be American Indian: that could be low-scoring by this metric but should not be read as “bad” given the institution’s mission).
These numbers are based on the most recent year available, generally 2023, which predates effects of the US Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action. This has often changed, sometimes dramatically, the incoming student demographics at some institutions.
Overall diversity
Freshman profile
Demographic data for first time degree-seeking students. Note that this uses US federal demographic data: it only has two genders and a specified set of ethnicities and races.
Freshman geography
Test scores
SAT scores
ACT scores
Majors
This presents information on the number of majors and the median earnings one and five years after graduation for people who got a degree from this institution in that field. The earnings are for those who are working and not enrolled in further education. The earnings data (from the federal college scorecard) also has information on earnings for those categorized as ‘MALE’ and ‘NOMALE’ – for readability, these are recategorized here as “Men” and “Women”, respectively, which adopts the gender binary used in other federal data. “W/M earnings ratio” is the median earnings of women divided by men, as a percentage.