Public Relations, Advertising, and Applied Communication at Union University

The estimated $25,832 debt burden here aligns closely with what communications graduates typically carry, but when paired with first-year earnings around $40,000—based on three comparable Tennessee programs—it creates a debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.65 that's manageable though not exceptional. This lands squarely in the middle of what you'd expect nationally for this field, where median earnings sit at $39,794. The challenge is that we're working with estimates from peer programs rather than Union's actual graduate outcomes, so there's inherent uncertainty about how this specific program performs.

What the Tennessee data suggests is relative consistency across the state's communications programs. The estimated earnings match the state median exactly, and graduates from UT-Knoxville—the state's flagship—earn only about $2,300 more in their first year. That narrow spread implies the field itself, rather than institutional prestige, largely determines starting salaries in Tennessee's communications market. Union's stronger admission standards (1243 SAT average, 47% acceptance rate) position it competitively within the state, though that academic selectivity doesn't necessarily translate to premium earnings in this particular major.

The practical consideration: a debt load under $26,000 is serviceable on $40,000 in earnings, but it assumes your child enters the communications field directly and secures work reasonably close to these estimates. Given the lack of program-specific data, visiting Union to understand their placement support and industry connections would help gauge whether their graduates actually hit these benchmarks—or exceed them.