The degrees that earn the best salaries — and protect you from AI

Times

2 days ago

After two years of gruelling A-Levels, the reward is often a bouquet of exciting prospects. Young achievers get to move to a new city, meet new friends, gain almost unlimited independence overnight and, of course, have the chance to further their education.
But the decisions around this leap to university: where to g, what to study, or even whether to go at all, can have a huge impact on your future finances. The average total debt built up by students in England is now £53,000 — far higher than the annual salary of many graduates even a decade after leaving university.
Graduates are also facing a tough jobs market and increasing competition from artificial intelligence (AI). So, here are the degrees that will make you rich — and those that are unlikely to be replaced by a computer any time soon.
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Statistics from the Department for Education show that graduates with economics degrees had the highest salaries 10 years after graduating, with an average salary of £68,600. Medicine and dentistry were close behind at £61,000 and mathematical sciences was next at £51,500.
Other top-paying degrees included engineering, architecture, computing and the sciences. According to the ministry's latest longitudinal education outcomes data, the average graduate salary a decade after graduation was £34,300.
'Degrees that tend to have the highest return on investment are those that marry technical expertise with problem solving,' said Victoria McLean from the career consultancy City CV .
'Medicine and dentistry can be long and costly routes, but they are one of the most secure and well-compensated pathways. Demand is ballooning for computer science graduates across every sector, because even industries that don't think they need AI talent yet soon will, so pursuing this will put you ahead of the curve.'
Don't be put off by a slightly lower starting salary. Industries such as law might pay less in the first year but there is plenty of room for growth — law graduates have an average salary of £23,000 in the first year but £40,500 by year ten, for instance — while nursing and midwifery start well but have lower growth prospects.
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Vicki Harvey from the University of Salford said that increasing your salary wasn't all about the industry or degree subject. 'It is a combination of other attributes, such as job preparedness, skills and understanding the role. Graduates should also look at the development opportunities that employers provide.'
For today's graduates, the key to choosing a degree that will make you rich is to find a subject that sits nicely in the Venn diagram of high-paying industries and those that are resilient to AI.
Unfortunately for those leaving university, entry-level jobs have already been hit. Data from the recruitment firm Adzuna found that the number of such roles had fallen by 32 per cent since the launch of ChatGPT, the most popular free online AI tool, in November 2022.
Until this point, the number of graduate vacancies had tracked a similar path to overall vacancies — both are bad news for job hunters, with overall vacancies down 14 per cent since the start of 2019 and graduate vacancies down 63.5 per cent.
Lacey Kaelani has been tracking AI threats through the jobs platform that she runs, Metaintro. According to her, the most resilient sectors include software engineering and computer sciences, nursing and healthcare, civil engineering, and psychology or behaviour sciences.
She said: 'Basic-level software engineering is already being replaced by AI systems but graduates with more advanced degrees and working on their own AI projects are becoming the ones that are best prepared in the labour market.
Another way of judging AI risks is to look at AI Occupational Exposure, or an AIOE score — the higher the score, the more replaceable occupations are by AI.
'Meanwhile healthcare can't be automated because it requires physical presence and emotional intelligence and civil engineering requires on-site assessment and in-person work. And as AI handles research and data analysis, psychology and understanding the nuances in human behavior becomes more valuable.'
According to the Department for Education, industries such as sport, leisure and recreation, engineering and sociology are among the least exposed. Economics, maths and accounting are among the most.
Graduate salaries also have to be looked at in the context of how much students pay to get their degree in the first place.
Tuition fees are set to increase for the first time since 2017 for students starting university this September. The cap on fees for full-time students will rise to £9,535 a year, up from £9,250.
But wannabe graduates should focus instead on how they will repay their loans — and the impact on their payslip. Those starting university this year will be on the Plan 5 repayment system. This means that 9 per cent of earnings above £25,000 will go towards paying back their loan.
It gives a basic-rate taxpayer with a salary above that threshold a marginal tax rate of 37 per cent. A higher-rate taxpayer pays a marginal rate of 51 per cent, meaning they take home just 49p of every extra £1 earned. The loans are not cancelled out until 40 years after someone graduates, so this so-called grad-tax will affect the amount they take home until they are at least 61, unless they pay off the loan earlier.
Most of today's students, and those who are heading to university, are getting a worse deal than previous graduates. The new rules, which apply to anyone who started university in 2023 or later, lowered the threshold at which you start paying your loans from £27,295 to £25,000 and extended the loan term for most from 30 years to 40 years.
The shift removed any initial breathing room when finances are tightest, and will mean that they are worse off in the long term. According to calculations from Quilter, the wealth manager, a graduate with a starting salary of £30,000 would pay back about £37,000 in total under the current plan, compared with £31,000 under the previous rules.
Hannah Salton, a career coach and author of Graduate Careers Uncovered, said: 'University is no longer the guaranteed route to a good career that it once was, and the student loan system means that you will usually be graduating with significant debt.
'If you're thinking about university, you need to weigh up the pros and cons for you. That includes thinking about the debt you might take on, your personal circumstances and how you will be supported during and after your studies.'