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Hundreds of thousands of young people are in the process of applying to university, in time for a 2018 start. Their choices can make a huge difference to future earnings.

For most university graduates, having a degree pays.

Over the course of a lifetime, estimates suggest women can expect to earn about £250,000 more if they have a degree, while the figure is roughly £170,000 for men.

In England, higher tuition fees mean that, on average, students graduate with debts of more than £50,000 - much more than their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But repayments are only one of many factors which affect how much money graduates will have in their pockets in years to come.

The universities which attract the highest incomes

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are big differences in the earnings of graduates from different universities.

Five years after graduation, average annual earnings for students who were taught at the London School of Economics, Imperial College London and University of Oxford are more than £40,000.

Graduates of the 24 Russell Group universities earn an average of £33,500 after five years - about 40% more than those who studied at other universities.

At the other end of the scale, there are several institutions - many of them dance and drama colleges - where average earnings after five years are closer to £15,000.

Importantly, many of the differences here are not down to the universities themselves.

They have different average earnings partly because students aren't all the same - they have different abilities and interests.

Entrants to Oxford, LSE and Russell Group universities start their degrees, on average, with better exam grades, for example.

Subject choice can make a big difference

The big decision about what to study at university can be very important for future earnings.

Five years after graduation, the income gap between students who studied the subjects that attract the highest and lowest salaries can be considerable.

Graduates of medicine and dentistry earn an average of £46,700, while those who studied economics take home £40,000.

These figures are about double the average wages of creative arts (£20,100), agriculture (£22,000) and mass communication (£22,300) graduates.

Crucially, these differences are smaller, but remain significant, even when students with similar A-level grades are compared.

As careers progress the gaps get bigger, with graduates of the high-earning subjects pulling even further away.

For example, students of law, economics and management subjects at the London School of Economics do extremely well, with 10% of male graduates earning more than £300,000 by the time they are in their early 30s.

Sexual inequality

A number of factors influence graduate earnings long before they get as far as choosing which course to study, or which university to attend.

In particular, the reality is that male graduates earn more than female graduates.

The gap can already be seen only one year after graduation, when men earn an average of £1,500 (8%) more than women per year.

After five years, the gap has increased to around £3,500, or 14%.

This is likely to continue to increase with age, but it should be noted that this gap is less than half that experienced by non-graduates.

Some - but by no means all - of this difference can be explained by differences in subject choices, with women more likely to choose courses with low earnings potential.

For example, creative arts, nursing, psychology and social science all have far more female than male students, while the opposite is true for architecture, computing and engineering.

However, a large part of this difference cannot be explained away by personal choice.

Rich vs poor

The social background of students also matters.

Those from better off households are much more likely to go to university.

They are also much more likely to go to more selective universities.

That is a large part of the reason why male graduates from households with incomes above £50,000 earn about 20% (£7,000) more than their university peers from lower income households, by the time they are in their early 30s.

Among women, there is a 16% (£4,000) gap between these households.

Remarkably though, even when comparing students who did the same subject at the same university, those from the richest households still earn around 10% more than their peers from less affluent backgrounds.

This suggests improving access to university alone is not enough to address issues of social mobility.

Never-ending debt

The increase in tuition fees to £9,250 per year in England has significantly increased the level of debt students graduate with - and the repayments many will make over their careers.

Most will in fact not pay back all of the cost of their tuition, with the taxpayer picking up the difference.

Recent changes have offered some respite to those who go on to have low earnings.

Graduates only ever have to pay 9% of their income above a given threshold, regardless of the size of their debts.

The threshold will rise from £21,000 to £25,000 in April 2018, putting more money in the pockets of significant numbers of graduates.

Over the course of their working lives, this could save graduates up to £15,700 in student loan repayments.

It also means that more than 40% of graduates are now expected to repay less than they would have had there been no changes to the student loan system since 2011.

And, for eight out of 10 graduates, it is likely that they will get to the end of their working lives having never paid off that loan.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation.

Dr Jack Britton is a senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which describes itself as an independent research institute which aims to inform public debate on economics.

More details about its work and its funding can be found here.

Charts produced by Becca Meier

Edited by Duncan Walker

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The degrees that make you rich... and the ones that don't

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Hundreds of thousands of young people are in the process of applying to university, in time for a 2018 start. Their choices can make a huge difference to future earnings. For most university graduates, having a degree pays.

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A University Education. By David Willetts. Oxford University Press; 432 pages; $32.50 and £25.
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IN 1945 there were 500 universities across the globe. Today there are more than 10,000. As universities continue to displace apprenticeships and the armed forces as the main path to adulthood in the rich world, scrutiny of higher education has increased. In England critics see universities as hotbeds of anti-Brexit provocation and places where censorious students stifle debate. Complaints about hefty fees and lacklustre teaching are common.

David Willetts, Britain's higher education minister in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition and now a Tory peer, argues against those who say the answer is to turn the clock back by cutting student numbers. "A University Education" is not the mix of gossip and post hoc justification normally churned out by former ministers. Instead, Lord Willetts provides something more valuable: an examination of the state of English universities, a defence of the value of a university education and an argument that the provision of higher education should be expanded further.

This may seem curiously egalitarian stuff for a former Conservative minister. Yet Lord Willetts views a university education as akin to home ownership-both are good for society and something that every parent hopes their child will grow up to possess. He cites evidence that graduates are healthier, happier and less inclined to a life of crime. He notes that the graduate wage premium has held up even as the number of students has grown. Attempts by graduates to restrict access to university, he writes, are little more than "educational Nimbyism".

As a minister Lord Willetts was best known for nearly trebling tuition fees to £9,000 ($14,000) a year in 2012. Some worried that this would dissuade poor pupils from applying. However, thanks to generous government loans, their numbers continued to grow. In policy circles, the debate has moved on to whether the new arrivals benefit from university study, which is often in less research-orientated institutions, or whether the money would be better spent on other forms of education.

Here Lord Willetts is no less trenchant. He argues that these institutions, which tend to languish near the bottom of research-focused league tables, simply perform a different role. They may produce few bankers, judges or Nobel prizewinners, but that reflects their intake, rather than poor tuition. They often add as much value as more prestigious institutions. A recent analysis of graduate salaries by The Economist reached a similar conclusion.

Yet Lord Willetts is far from Panglossian. He traces many flaws in England's system to the gates of its grandest universities, Oxford and Cambridge. In a brisk history, he tells how, even as the university flourished in Europe, its spread was halted in England by protective measures put in place at the behest of Oxbridge. It was not until the creation of University College London in 1829 that England gained its third university, six centuries after the second.

Oxbridge still provides the metric by which other English universities are judged. This leads to excellent research and strong protection of institutional autonomy. It also means universities draw their students from across the country, control their own admissions procedures and compete for the best students. Partly as a result, getting into a prestigious university just about guarantees the student a good job, since mere entry is proof of academic ability. Students thus may have less incentive to work hard, writes Lord Willetts, which allows universities to focus on research. And since universities have so much sway over admissions, the school-leaving curriculum has been narrowed to meet their specialised needs.

A reader may wish for a more thorough investigation of potential solutions to these problems. But "A University Education" is nevertheless an admirably clear analysis of English higher education. To its credit, it is an inversion of most writing about English universities, which tends to be laudatory of the Oxbridge model and unduly sceptical of others. Lord Willetts's book is all the more interesting for it.

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A University Education. By David Willetts. Oxford University Press; 432 pages; $32.50 and £25. Get our daily newsletter IN 1945 there were 500 universities across the globe. Today there are more than 10,000. As universities continue to displace apprenticeships and the armed forces as the main path to adulthood in the rich world, scrutiny of higher education has increased.

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UK economy 'could benefit from more going to university'

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Universities UK says educating people of all ages would help to meet economic challenges

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Introduction

The EBacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps young people's options open for further study and future careers.

The EBacc is:

English language and literature

maths

the sciences

geography or history

a language

Subjects

English

To count towards the English part of the EBacc, pupils need to take both English literature and English language GCSE exams.

Science

Pupils need to take one of the following options:

GCSE combined science - pupils take 2 GCSEs that cover the 3 main sciences, biology, chemistry and physics

3 single sciences at GCSE - pupils choose 3 subjects from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science

Languages

Taking any ancient or modern foreign language GCSE counts towards the languages part of the EBacc.

EBacc qualifications

To count towards the EBacc measure, qualifications must be included in the approved list of the qualifications.

EBacc measures

Secondary schools are measured on the number of pupils that take GCSEs in these core subjects. Schools are also measured on how well their pupils do in these subjects.

Pupils' attainment is calculated as an average point score, meaning that all results at all grades count towards the EBacc.

To calculate a school's EBacc average point score we:

add together the EBacc average point score for all pupils at the end of key stage 4

divide by the number of pupils in the group

To calculate a pupil's average point score we take an average of the points scored in the 5 EBacc subject areas. The EBacc is a performance measure for schools, not a qualification for pupils. Pupils' individual average point scores are not published.

EBacc impact

The EBacc is made up of the subjects which are considered essential to many degrees and open up lots of doors.

Research shows that a pupil's socio-economic background impacts the subjects they choose at GCSE, and that this determines their opportunities beyond school.

A study by the UCL Institute of Education shows that studying subjects included in the EBacc provides students with greater opportunities in further education and increases the likelihood that a pupil will stay on in full-time education. Sutton Trust research reveals that studying the EBacc can help improve a young person's performance in English and maths.

The government's ambition is to see 75% of pupils studying the EBacc subject combination at GCSE by 2022, and 90% by 2025.

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Skip to main content We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set additional cookies to understand how you use GOV.UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.

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Is an overly narrow conception of social justice - if it can be called that - among policymakers and those around them starting to feed into pupils' real-life experiences, with consequent negative effects on many of them?

The thought occurred this week as I researched and wrote about two schools, with close links to ministers. Both are in the process of changing their offers to pupils.

At Folkestone Academy, one of New Labour's original academies which was set up in the Kent town in 2007 under the sponsorship of the businessman Roger De Haan, big changes have followed after De Haan stepped down last year, to make way for a takeover by Turner Schools.

This is currently a three-school academy trust headed as chief executive by Jo Saxton. Saxton used to work in central London as chief executive of Future Academies, which was set up by the former academies minister, Lord Nash, and his wife, Caroline.

Turner Schools is also setting up a fourth institution, also in Folkestone: the Turner Free School, with a motto of "a traditional education for the 21st century" and a prominent picture of Aristotle in its brochure.

At Folkestone Academy, Turner has proposed scrapping hair and beauty as a vocational option; removing food technology from "core provision"; and collapsing dance lessons for younger pupils into PE.

The changes come after the school closed both an on-site restaurant - where students had been cooking and serving meals to the public - and a similarly-staffed hair and beauty salon.

At Harris Academy Peckham, in south London, which was the second school to open within the Conservative peer Lord Harris's growing empire in 2003, the changes currently in train are, if anything, more dramatic.

In email to staff citing cost pressures, the federation - which paid its 10 highest earners £216,000 each on average in 2016-17 - has proposed closing its sixth form as well as shutting its hair and beauty and motor maintenance departments.

A former staff member was so concerned, he wrote to Lord Harris to plead with him to reverse the proposed changes, which were especially important as the school had been known for its emphasis on vocational options from its inception.

His letter states: "Vocational courses were essential for students that were less academic. Which leads me to question the justification for closing the only two vocational departments (hairdressing and motor vehicles) in this school."

Concerns in this letter that an earlier commitment to vocational education at this school, starting under the Labour government, were being watered down seem very similar to those voiced by sources at Folkestone Academy, where De Haan was also said to be committed to work-related options.

We should, of course, rightly be cautious about reading too much into changes at only two schools. Yet I wonder, given how closely these two organisations are connected to policymaking (Jo Saxton, for example, took time out from the day job to speak at a Conservative Party Conference fringe event with the schools minister, Nick Gibb, last autumn, and is known to be close to another Conservative schools reform favourite, Rachel de Souza) if we should not be seeing their moves as indicative of forces emanating from that policy centre.

So what is going on, I wondered?

I can think of at least four factors possibly at play.

First, is money significant, here? Both academy chains have set out pressures on finances as contributing to plans to restructure, of which these curricular changes are a part.

Second, as ever, the influence of league table performance measures never seems far away. Turner has suggested that more time be spent on core, academic, subjects in year 11 as it seeks to drive up results.

At Harris Peckham, the executive principal Rebecca Hickey, wrote to parents - after my website broke the story about the plans - to state that "changes nationally to the curriculum and examination system" lay behind them.

As a first bullet point, she listed the introduction of a government requirement that at least three quarters of pupils need to study the (academic) EBacc qualification by 2022.

Third, both of these schools seem content to leave colleges or workplaces to provide vocational courses, possibly via apprenticeships. Turner Schools told me that hair, beauty and catering had declined in popularity at Folkestone Academy, and that "professional courses...with state of the art facilities," were available at nearby East Kent College.

At Peckham, Hickey told parents that: "Nationally, subjects like hair and beauty and motor vehicle maintenance are now delivered through new apprenticeship schemes. These are heavily funded by the government and offer the opportunity for students to learn trades in a workplace, whilst training. They make it far more likely that the students studying these subjects will actually get jobs at the end of it."

All these factors, though, may be underpinned by a fourth. I wonder if, where once New Labour argued that pupils needed access to a mix of academic and vocational options, now the dominant message from the Conservative policy-making machine has been that all young people are entitled to an academic curriculum.

Only in this way, it is argued, will we have a better chance of ensuring "bright but poor" children get on in life, by going to university. On that argument, perhaps we should not be thinking in terms of "less academic" children at all, but simply making a more academic curriculum available to all.

It's perhaps a potent message to some, and is seemingly driving the advent of institutions such as Harris Westminster Sixth Form, in central London, which has a selective and thus academically very well-motivated, if often disadvantaged, intake.

This week, while previously vocationally-oriented Harris Peckham was considering closing its sixth form, academically selective Harris Westminster was searching for a "fundraiser" to seek out donations of up to £1 million a year.

All this may be addressing social justice from the wrong end of the telescope. As education secretary, Michael Gove often seemed to focus on the tiny numbers of disadvantaged children going to Oxbridge.

Yet instead of starting with low take-up rates for disadvantaged students at Russell Group universities, and building policy around that, should we not begin with the need to ensure that all young people, "bright" or not, receive a broad range of curriculum choices?

If we put less emphasis on vocational routes, it seems a good bet that it won't be the students at Harris Westminster - important though their needs no doubt are - who miss out.

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National Education Union (NEU) | NUT - The Teachers' Union

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Is an overly narrow conception of social justice - if it can be called that - among policymakers and those around them starting to feed into pupils' real-life experiences, with consequent negative effects on many of them? The thought occurred this week as I researched and wrote about two schools, with close links to ministers.

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OECD Reviews of Vocational Education and Training Apprenticeship in England, United Kingdom | Career Industry Council of Australia (CICA)

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Across many countries, apprenticeship is now experiencing a revival, in the light of a wide range of evidence demonstrating its effectiveness as a means of transitioning young people into work, and serving the economy. But few countries can match the energy and range of reforms currently being pursued in England.

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Are vocational qualifications a better option than university?

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In this economic climate, with such high rates of graduate unemployment, should school leavers give far greater consideration to vocational qualifications?