Here’s a typical college scenario: Your daughter’s dream job is to be an elementary school teacher and reading specialist. Yet she’ll need to dive deep into debt to pursue her undergraduate degree, and borrow more if continuing to grad school.

She’s worried — rightfully — about her financial future, and she’s looking for answers.

How much debt might she be saddled with? How much will her college degree translate into salary once she lands a job? And what budget-squeezing sacrifices might be necessary to repay the swath of loans?

Those types of questions are on the minds of countless college students. And with student loan debt now over the $1 trillion mark, there’s a greater urgency for answers and successful outcomes.

A new online service called GradSense connects those costs and benefits questions with helpful data and financial planning advice.

Launched earlier this year, GradSense is being used at more than 30 schools around the country.

The service, developed jointly by the Council of Graduate Schools, a higher-education organization with more than 500 member-schools, and financial services company TIAA-CREF, aims to help students better understand the impact of their field of study on their future earnings potential.

The key component of GradSense is an interactive debt-to-salary calculator, which can be accessed at www.gradsense.org. While federal data is available for student loan debt and occupation-specific salaries, it’s often not easy to mine and requires sifting through several databases.

Moreover, there are no financial education resources to offer context to the numbers.

The GradSense debt-to-salary calculator, on the other hand, pools all of the relevant data into a simple-to-use tool that give users a baseline to compare. Students start by clicking on the desired degree they hope to attain, the field of study, and a more specific occupation after graduating.

Take teaching, for example. A student seeking an undergraduate degree in education will accumulate a median debt of $27,000, based on data for students who graduated in 2011-12. The median debt level climbs to $33,250 if pursuing a master’s in education, according to GradSense.

Next, the calculator shows expected salary levels — starting, middle and expert pay grades. A K-12 teacher in a non-science or math field could earn in a range of $12,840 on the low end to $64,200 on the high end, with the median salary of $42,800. That’s based on 2010 data of students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree and who worked full-time or part-time, according to GradSense.

After using the calculator, GradSense steers users through a four-part program that shows the impact of student spending decisions, provides advice for repaying student loans, offers guidance on transitioning from college into a career and tips for reviewing and negotiating job offers.