Editor's note: With the release of the 2012 Texas Public Higher Education Almanac, we have added the newest year of data to our interactive and made it possible to share links directly to a particular view.

Only two of the state’s 38 public four-year universities — the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University — can graduate half of their students within four years. Meanwhile, Texas Southern University and the University of Houston-Downtown graduate just 3 percent of their students in four years, the worst rates in the state.

Using data acquired from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Tribune has built an interactive graphic that enables comparisons between these 38 universities on a range of factors, from four- and six-year graduation rates to tuition and fees to degrees awarded.

Use the drop down menu to select the type of information you want to compare schools by. Use the list of universities to select campuses to compare. To zoom in on a section of the line graph, click and drag a box around an area.

Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College, Texas A&M-San Antonio, Texas A&M-Texarkana, The University of Texas at Brownsville, University of Houston-Victoria and University of North Texas at Dallas do not have four-year, five-year or six-year graduation rate data available, and will not be selectable for those filters. Also, Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College's operating expenses and revenue totals are reported together with Sul Ross State University.

Data definitions:

Full-Time Student Equivalent (FTSE): The FTSE represents the number of students in a way that makes the count comparable across different contexts. For example, one full-time student would equal 1.0 FTSE. A student that takes fewer than 12 hours in a single semester at a public university is considered part-time, and would be considered less than 1.0 FTSE. The number of full-time and part-time students summed make the FTSE.

Four-Year, Five-Year, and Six-Year Graduation Rates: Graduation rates are determined by the number of students who successfully graduate from a university in particular timespan. To track this rate, students are broken down into cohorts at enrollment, and are then tracked throughout their academic career. For a student to be included in the 2009 Four-Year Graduation Rate, for example, they have to have enrolled in 2005 and successfully graduated by their fourth year.