Exposed: The Russell Group unis where grads are most likely to earn under £15k-a-year

Makes all those student debts seem worth it, doesn’t it?


It’s inevitable: you go to uni and end up being thousands of pounds in debt. But it’s all worth it (you assume) because you’ll come out of uni and bag yourself a decent paying job that will take care of it all. But what if that isn’t the case?

You’d think you’d do pretty well at one of the top universities in the country, but turns out, there are some Russell Group unis where you’ve got a fair chance of earning less than £15k a year out of uni, even if you end up in full-time employment.

That’s according to stats collected as part of HESA’s graduate survey, which has charted the success of the class of 2019. It counts those who are still living in the UK, and who made it into full-time employment.

If you want to make sure you’re not one of those grads earning an underwhelming £15k a year – then Imperial and LSE are your safest bets. Not a single grad was recorded as earning £15k.

The percentage of Russell Group grads earning under £15k a year

The University of Glasgow – 4.69 per cent

The University of Exeter – 4.08 per cent

Queen’s University Belfast – 4.00 per cent

The University of Edinburgh – 3.78 per cent

Newcastle University – 3.62 per cent

The University of York – 3.40 per cent

The University of Sheffield – 3.37 per cent

The University of Manchester – 3.22 per cent

The University of Liverpool – 2.83 per cent

Cardiff University – 2.79 per cent

The University of Leeds – 2.48 per cent

The University of Southampton – 2.46 per cent

University of Durham – 2.45 per cent

The University of Birmingham – 2.44 per cent

The University of Bristol – 2.29 per cent

University of Nottingham – 2.04 per cent

Queen Mary University of London – 1.95 per cent

The University of Cambridge – 1.85 per cent

The University of Warwick – 1.78 per cent

The University of Oxford – 1.71 per cent

King’s College London – 1.64 per cent

University College London – 0.64 per cent

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine – 0 per cent

London School of Economics and Political Science – 0 per cent

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• If you go to any of these Russell Group unis then you’re most likely to end up unemployed