Every student’s favourite question: ‘so what are you actually planning to do with that degree?’
Planning beyond the age of 22 is pretty impossible when you’re a teenager. Eighteen-year-olds don’t tend to worry that much about the future, but if they did, maybe more of them would decide to go into dentistry, which has been revealed to be the most lucrative degree for graduates by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
HESA does an annual survey of all graduates, part of which asks how much they’re making 15 months after completing their studies. According to the findings, most students actually earn less than the average income for someone aged 22-29, which is £29,120. Even law students at top universities like Edinburgh and Bristol fell below this threshold, they discovered.
So which subjects do turn out well paid graduates? It turns out the answers are dentistry, with a median salary £42,000, medicine, at £35,000, and pharmacology & pharmacy at £35,000. In total, 20 subjects had students receiving higher than average salaries within a couple of years, most of them being STEM or vocational.
The UK university graduates with the highest salaries
- Dentistry – £42,000
- Medicine – £35,000
- Pharmacology & pharmacy – £35,000
- Veterinary medicine – £35,000
- Economics – £32,000
- Electronic & electrical engineering – £32,000
- General engineering – £32,000
- Materials technology – £32,000
- Social work – £32,000
- Aeronaughtical & manufacturing engineering – £31,000
- Mathematics – £31,000
- Mechanical engineering – £31,000
- Physics & astronomy – £30,500
- Natural sciences – £30,279
- Bioengineering & biomedical engineering – £30,000
- Building – £30,000
- Civil engineering – £30,000
- Computing science – £30,000
- Russian – £30,000
In short: become an engineer if you want cash. The Sunday Times has also created a search engine where you can look up your exact degree at your specific university to see what the fates have in store for you. You can have a look at that, or read their analysis, here.
Sadly, there’s no magical formula for earning loads of money, and statistics can only tell you so much. Study what you want to study – you can always become a dentist sometime later. Life is too short to dedicate it to civil engineering. Unless you’re crazy for bridges, in which case go get the bag.
Time Out and Britain’s universities
Whatever you choose to do, you want to do it at the right place – and we at Time Out can certainly help you out with it. Here are some of the latest editions of the planet’s most respected uni rankings: QS World University Rankings, Complete University Guide and StudentCrowd. Plus, if you’re in clearing: here are the highest ranked universities in Clearing 2024 and the Russell Group unis in clearing.
Did you see that this majestic Victorian UK train station is getting a £140 million revamp?
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