Which degree will earn you the most money?

These are the degrees at the forefront of a wave of shiny new studies that will earn their students the highest graduate salaries.

Clare Marchant, the chief executive of Ucas, says the shift away from the humanities, where applications are slumping, particularly for foreign languages and the fashion for degrees such as computing and business studies, signals that today’s students are increasingly driven by the desire for a well paid — and stable — career.

“Education is massively down, teaching is massively down. Nursing has stopped rising. Is that influenced by strikes over pay and conditions? Of course it will be,” she says.

League tables of the best-paid graduates in Britain published by The Sunday Times confirm why studying computing is a worthwhile investment. The rankings, based on the reported earnings of full-time UK domiciled undergraduate students who completed their degrees in 2021, lay bare the extent to which young people choose to study — and where — is critical to their earning potential after graduation. While Oxford and Cambridge may be the most sought-after universities in the world, it is computer science graduates from Imperial College London who top the table, enjoying an average salary of £64,000 six months after graduation. That’s more than three times the average earnings for graduates in drama, dance and cinematics at the University of Central Lancashire (£18,000), which is at the bottom of the table, according to our analysis of the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s (Hesa) figures. That is less even than the minimum wage of £10.42 an hour, raising the question of whether graduates would have been better off going straight into a job.

The highest paying degrees in the UK

What could you expect to earn after graduating from your chosen degree at various universities?

The second-highest earners are graduates of business, management and marketing at Oxford, on average annual salaries of £58,000, while dentistry graduates from Bristol and computer science graduates from Cambridge tied for third place, with average salaries of £48,000 six months after graduation.

The highest-earning subjects across all UK universities are dentistry and medicine, with median graduate salaries of £42,000 and £35,000 respectively. The lowest-paid degrees were creative writing and animal science, both with an average salary of £22,000.

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Engineering and economics degree holders earn £30,000 on average — about the same as computer science graduates.

The Department of Education estimates that by 2035 48 per cent of jobs in the UK will require at least an undergraduate degree, up from 36 per cent in 2020.

Traditional universities have been criticised by politicians and employers for being slow to update their degrees to reflect the modern workplace, but there are signs things are changing, with many now squeezing their arts degrees and expanding business and computing faculties to meet demand.

Maria O’Connor, 20, is starting the third year of a business studies degree at the University of Bath. She says her four-year course includes placements with industry and a year working abroad, and was a popular choice with her classmates at her state school in St Albans.

“Stepping into a job in the corporate world is easier from a degree like this because the courses have so many connections with employers already,” she says. “Some friends have chosen history or English or art degrees but they do not know what career they want to do after graduation.”

Susi Wilkinson, programme director for the moving image and digital arts programme at the London College of Communication, part of the University of the Arts London (UAL), says one of the institution’s most popular degrees is no longer graphic design or fine art but computer games design.

£45,000 is the average salary after studying dentistry at Sheffield, Plymouth or King’s College

Wilkinson says the college’s hugely popular BA in games art, which launched last September, includes studying the psychology of playing computer games and how to code as well as the development of characters and animation. The college also offers a BA in games design and another in virtual reality. Up to ten teenagers apply for each place.

Graduates work in companies including Mediatonic, Splash Damage and Radical Forge. “These courses are becoming popular because of the growth of games as an industry. The UK games industry is huge,” Wilkinson says.

“Kids are playing triple A games like Super Mario and Mortal Kombat but there is also a big culture of indie games. Our kids socialise through games; they go home and pick up their gaming sets to play with their friends. It has become an integral part of what we do as a society. Many universities have now set up these degrees. This is one area in the arts where you can see a clear career path — it’s a big and growing industry.”

George Cozens, 24, a student on UAL’s BA in games art course, says: “As a child I was always a gamer.” He realised it could be a serious career path when, during the pandemic, he took part in a competition that involved making a computer game called Robo Wreckers from scratch with a programmer friend.

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“I think I have now struck gold,” he says. “I am very set on what I want to do and passionate about it. I want to get into the industry and work in a studio as a junior artist modelling, for instance, 3D characters or environments for a company like Rockstar”.

New institutions are springing up to fulfil the demand for the latest degrees that suit the 21st-century world of work. Black Mountains College in the Brecon Beacons National Park will offer the world’s first degree course to prepare students for a career in times of climate emergency, while the London Interdisciplinary School, which opened in 2021, gives students real world problems including the climate crisis or inequality to tackle using teaching from science, social science, arts and humanities, often working alongside industry..

One of its first students, Vishal Mistry, 22, dropped out of an electronic engineering degree at the University of Manchester because he was so excited by the interdisciplinary approach and the idea of learning by problem solving. He liked the exposure to the world of work the university offers.

“I loved the idea of bringing together topics,” he says. “It felt natural to explore different things. I think more universities should have degrees like this instead of being focused on a very specialised path, as many are”.

As inflation-linked student loan interest rates rise, the threshold at which students begin paying their loans falls and teaching continues to be disrupted by industrial action, the question of whether it’s worth going to university has never been so pertinent.

In 2020 the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) calculated the lifetime premium of graduates from different courses, subtracting the cost of student loan repayments, taxes and the opportunity cost of studying.

Their research found that one in five undergraduates would have been better off financially if they had not gone to university. But overall, the IFS determined that getting a degree will increase your average net lifetime earnings by 20 per cent for men and women.

Despite concerns raised by the government over “rip-off” degrees that may leave the taxpayer and students worse off, the IFS estimated the exchequer could expect to gain £110,000 in tax revenue for every male graduate and £30,000 for every female graduate.

These are average figures — and the premium will have been eroded further since then by the government’s decision to raise student loan interest rates and extend the term over which students have to pay back their loans from 30 to 40 years before it is written off.

Martin Birchall of High Fliers Research, a market research company, says: “Teenagers choosing their next steps should look carefully at the salary data for a degree at a particular university. It’s not just your subject of choice that may determine your future pay, but the university you get into.”

For instance, University of Oxford theology graduates can expect to earn £23,000, below the £25,000 earned on average of theology graduates across universities, according to The Sunday Times’s analysis of Hesa data. Those who read theology at Exeter, Bristol and Edinburgh will earn more than if they had studied at Oxford.

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