Graduates Earn More – It’s Proven
When you achieve your Degree at Selby College, the award will still be via the University’s Awarding Body, the difference is you have not had all the cost of living expenses or travelling somewhere else to gain the same award.
University graduates earn on average about a quarter more than people who leave school after their ‘A’ Levels, a study has suggested.
Higher Education organisation Universities UK measured the economic impact of getting a Degree. It found average additional earnings of £160,000 over a working life.
But there are wide variations –with arts graduates only gaining a tenth of the additional earnings received from a Medicine Degree. The research carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, shows that Higher Education courses bring significant benefits to people when they enter the labour market.
Earnings Boost
The report concludes that “there is no evidence of an erosion of the graduate premium despite increasing numbers of graduates” – as the UK demand from employers for graduates has also continued to increase.
But there are considerable differences in the extent to which individual graduates benefit.
Women gain more financial advantage than men from getting a Degree. And men from poorer backgrounds increase their earnings more than men from affluent homes.
Degrees such as Medicine, Law, Sciences and Languages deliver higher returns than Arts and Humanities. While the graduate premium in earnings for a Medicine Degree is £340,315, an Arts graduate can expect to receive only an additional £34,494, over a working lifetime.
Degree Earnings Premium
Medicine £340,315
Engineering £243,730
Maths £241, 749
Business £184,694
Average Graduate £160, 061
Languages £96, 281
Humanities £51,549
Arts £34,494
Source – Universities UK/ PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007
The Universities UK report also says that graduates are less likely to be unemployed.
These comparisons are with students entering the workplace with A Levels –rather than those leaving after GCSEs. And in practice a large majority of students who stay in education beyond the age of 16 continue into education.
Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said the report “confirms what we have been saying for some time now - that graduates, on average, earn more and are more likely to be in a job than those without Degrees, and that Higher Education is likely to be the best investment a student will ever make.”
(Article Source –BBC News – Graduates Earnings Stay Ahead – 07/02/07)