This is how much your degree subject will earn you in your lifetime

One degree is going to net you an extra million quid and it’s not English


Forget how much your degree will earn you straight out of uni, let’s talk about how much it’s going to net you over your whole life.

Luckily, economics boffins at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have worked out the “average lifetime gain from enrolling in a particular course”.

Medicine will see graduates earn a shade over a million pounds over their lifetimes. Unsurprisingly, economics and law aren’t far behind.

Meanwhile, studying creative arts would see you lose out on earnings. In fact, graduates would be financially better off if they hadn’t gone down that path.

Check out the full table below to see how much your degree will earn you:

If you want to really get into the data, here goes. We took the average net lifetime returns for each subject, and then took the average of women’s and men’s earnings for each subject.

The IFS calculated the “sum of the increase (or decrease) in earnings associated with attending university at each age, plus the value of maintenance loans received and minus the value of any student loan repayments and taxes paid, all discounted.”

Certain subjects might be high-earning, but don’t provide that much extra benefit to their already-well-off students. “For example, physics has a lower average return than most subjects, even though the earnings of men who study physics are higher than those for most other subjects. The reason is that men studying physics have among the most favourable background conditions of all subjects behind only economics and maths.”

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