The Best Master's in Accounting Programs in Texas for 2027

Four years out, medians on this list run from $97,392 at Texas Tech to $117,656 at UT Austin.

UT Austin leads on both counts: the top rank among these schools and the highest graduate pay.

Cost is the first filter for most students comparing accounting programs in Texas, and the range is wide. In-state tuition among the 13 accounting programs analyzed runs from $8,319 at the University of North Texas to $59,500 at Southern Methodist University, with most public Texas MAcc programs clustering under $12,000 and most private nonprofits landing between $43,900 and $59,500. That gap is not a rounding error: it is the difference between financing a master's degree with a part-time job and taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Texas A&M University-College Station illustrates the value case well. In-state tuition runs $9,092, and the program posts an 84% graduation rate, giving it one of the best cost-to-completion ratios of any accounting program in the state. Texas Tech University ($8,935 in-state, 69% graduation rate) and University of North Texas ($8,319, 61% graduation rate) sit even lower on price but trade off some completion rate, a real tradeoff for students weighing sticker price against the odds of finishing on schedule.

On the return side, the math is straightforward. A Texas resident paying $8,319 at UNT for a master of accountancy recoups that cost in well under a year at the national median accountant salary of $94,160. A student paying $59,500 at SMU needs roughly 7.6 months of that same median salary just to cover tuition, before living costs or the opportunity cost of two years out of full-time work. Neither choice is wrong, but the payback period is not the same, and prospective students should run that math themselves before enrolling in any Texas MAcc program.

SB 262 gave Texas a Pathway B on August 1, 2026: a bachelor's and 120 hours with two years of non-routine accounting work supervised by a CPA, beside Pathway A's 150 hours and one year. Pathway B certification also needs 27 upper-level accounting hours.

To sit for the exam: 120 semester hours with a bachelor's, 24 upper-level accounting and 21 upper-level business hours, and an ethics course. Every route also requires passing all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination.

A master's from this list usually takes a candidate past the 150 semester hours of Texas's one-year route; the count covers every college credit, undergraduate included. It is no longer the only way in, though: a bachelor's and two years of experience now reaches the same license.

Checked against the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy and the law behind it in October 2026. These rules are changing state by state, so confirm them with the board before you plan a course schedule around them.

Accreditation is the single clearest quality signal across accounting programs, and in accounting specifically, it comes in two tiers. AACSB accreditation, held by business schools including those at UT Austin, Texas A&M, Baylor, SMU, and UT Dallas, is the more selective standard; fewer than 6% of business programs worldwide hold it. ACBSP accreditation is a second, more accessible tier that still signals a program meets defined curriculum and outcome standards. A program's page should state its accreditation status directly; if it does not, that omission is itself informative.

For accounting specifically, the distinction matters because employers, especially the national and regional CPA firms that recruit heavily out of Texas, use accreditation as a first-pass filter on resumes. A master of accountancy from an AACSB-accredited program at a school like Texas A&M University-College Station or The University of Texas at Austin carries weight in campus recruiting that a non-accredited program does not automatically get. That is not a knock on smaller Texas schools, it is a practical reality of how large firms build their recruiting pipelines.

Accreditation does not replace due diligence on cost or outcomes, but it narrows the field fast. Every program that appears in this Texas ranking has verifiable IPEDS data behind its graduation rate and tuition figures; cross-check accreditation status directly on AACSB's site before treating any accounting program as a safe bet.

The University of Texas at Austin tops the list of accounting programs in Texas with a 97.5 Program Score, an 89% graduation rate, and in-state tuition of $11,688, the highest graduation rate of any ranked program in the state paired with tuition still under $12,000. That combination, a public price with a private-tier completion rate, is why it ranks first among Texas's MAcc programs this year.

Texas A&M University-College Station ranks second and third among Texas's ranked schools (the university appears twice in this analysis, reflecting distinct program tracks), with a 94 and 93.6 Program Score, an 84% graduation rate, and in-state tuition of just $9,092, the strongest value-for-outcome ratio of any large public accounting program in Texas.

Among private nonprofits, Trinity University ranks fourth with a 92.9 Program Score and an 84% graduation rate on $53,352 tuition, followed by Baylor University (91.2 score, 80% graduation rate, $58,100) and Southern Methodist University (91 score, 84% graduation rate, $59,500). These three compete on brand, small cohort sizes, and Dallas or San Antonio-area recruiting networks rather than on price, a different bet than the public programs above them in the ranking.

The University of Texas at Dallas rounds out the top tier at seventh, with a 90.4 Program Score, a 76% graduation rate, and in-state tuition of $10,639, proof that a public price point and a top-ten Texas ranking are not mutually exclusive.

Format flexibility varies widely across Texas accounting programs. Texas Tech University and University of North Texas both offer online or hybrid MAcc pathways aimed at working professionals, letting students keep a job while finishing the credit hours needed for CPA licensure. Fully online delivery does not show up as a separate line in IPEDS graduation-rate data, so this ranking scores online and on-campus formats on the same underlying institutional numbers rather than inventing a separate online-only metric.

Accelerated integrated tracks, where a student moves from bachelor's to MAcc in four or five years total, are common at the larger public research universities, including The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University-College Station. These tracks are built explicitly around the 150-hour CPA route and tend to compress cost by reducing total time enrolled, even when per-credit tuition is comparable to a standalone master's.

An online master of accountancy from an AACSB-accredited Texas program carries the same accreditation weight as its on-campus counterpart; employers recruiting out of Texas generally treat the credential as equivalent, provided the accreditation and credit-hour totals match. Students should confirm both directly with the program rather than assume format alone signals quality.

Every school in this ranking sits against the same national context for outcomes: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for accountants and auditors at $94,160, a figure that applies nationally, not to any single Texas school. No program in this analysis reports its own graduate starting salary in a way that is comparable across schools, so this figure should be read as the broad national benchmark against which a Texas master's in accounting is measured, not as a promise tied to any specific campus.

The BLS also projects steady demand for accountants and auditors nationally, driven by continued need for tax preparation, audit, and financial reporting work, the same functions a CPA license through a Texas MAcc credential qualifies a graduate to perform. Texas itself is home to a dense concentration of employers in this field: major accounting firms, energy companies headquartered in Houston, and financial services firms in Dallas all recruit heavily from in-state accounting programs, particularly AACSB-accredited ones with strong campus recruiting relationships.

Full detail on job outlook, growth projections, and wage percentiles is available directly from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Students weighing a $59,500 private program against an $8,319 public one should size that decision against this same national salary figure, since neither tuition price changes what the BLS reports as the going market rate for the credential both degrees lead to.

Not every strong Texas program is strong for the same reason. If minimizing debt is the priority, University of North Texas ($8,319), Texas Tech University ($8,935), and Texas A&M University-College Station ($9,092) all deliver a CPA-track MAcc for under $10,000 in-state, with graduation rates from 61% to 84%. If campus recruiting pull and brand strength with national firms matter more than price, The University of Texas at Austin's 89% graduation rate and 97.5 Program Score, the top mark in the state, justify its $11,688 tuition many times over relative to the private options above it.

Private nonprofits fill a different niche. Trinity University (84% graduation rate, $53,352), Baylor University (80%, $58,100), and Southern Methodist University (84%, $59,500) trade a public school's price for smaller cohorts and Dallas or San Antonio-based alumni networks. University of Dallas (73% graduation rate, $50,140) and Abilene Christian University (59%, $43,900) sit in a similar private tier at somewhat lower graduation rates and tuition. Abilene Christian University has the lowest score and the lowest graduation rate in this Texas analysis, so it is worth weighing carefully against its completion odds before enrolling.

Whichever path a student picks, the same three checks apply: confirm AACSB or ACBSP accreditation, confirm the total credit hours reach Texas's 150-hour Pathway A, and compare in-state tuition against the graduation rate, not against sticker price alone. Those three numbers, more than any brand name, predict whether a master's in accounting in Texas pays off.