Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at University of Nevada-Las Vegas

Nationally, aerospace engineering graduates at the bachelor's level earn around $72,000 in their first year—a solid return that typically justifies the educational investment. For UNLV's program, both earnings and debt figures are estimates drawn from peer programs across the country, since the graduate cohort here is too small for the Department of Education to publish specific outcomes. Based on these national comparables, the program shows an estimated debt of $23,656 against first-year earnings of $72,210, yielding a debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.33—well within manageable territory for an engineering degree.

What makes this calculation trickier than usual is UNLV's profile. With a 96% admission rate and average SAT of 1091, this is an open-access institution serving a different student population than the aerospace programs typically found at places like Purdue or Georgia Tech. Whether UNLV graduates achieve earnings similar to those national benchmarks depends heavily on factors we can't measure from this data: the program's industry connections in the Las Vegas area, whether it feeds graduates into defense contractors or commercial aerospace hubs elsewhere, and how well students transition from a high-access environment to a competitive engineering job market.

The financials suggest reasonable upside if outcomes align with national norms, but parents should verify employment outcomes directly with the department. Ask where recent graduates landed jobs and whether the program has established pipelines to major aerospace employers—critical context that estimated figures alone can't provide.