New data from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has quantified the stark disparity in lifetime earnings across UK university degrees, revealing that medicine, economics, and engineering graduates can expect to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds more than peers in creative arts or education. The findings, based on income tax records for over 260,000 graduates, offer a granular view of how subject choice interacts with gender, institution, and regional labour markets.
At the top of the earnings ladder, medical graduates command a median lifetime earnings premium of £1.3 million over non-graduates. Economics and engineering follow closely, with premiums of £870,000 and £800,000 respectively. Computer science and law also perform strongly, adding £750,000 and £720,000. These fields are tightly coupled to high-productivity sectors: finance, technology, and professional services.
At the lower end, creative arts degrees yield a median premium of just £160,000 while education and agriculture fall around £200,000. For some subjects, the financial return is essentially zero once student loan repayments and foregone earnings are accounted for. The IFS notes that one in five graduates of creative arts actually earns less over a lifetime than the median non-graduate.
Gender gaps persist across all subjects. The IFS finds that women in high-return fields still earn less than men, partly due to career breaks and occupational sorting. However, women in medicine and law fare better relative to their male counterparts than those in business or economics. The data also show that university choice matters: graduates of Russell Group institutions earn significantly more than those from post-1992 universities even after controlling for subject.
The report comes as the UK government pushes for greater focus on ‘high-value’ degrees, with the Office for Students using earnings data to assess course quality. Critics argue this approach sidelines the broader social and personal benefits of education, but the raw economic data is hard to ignore. For a 18-year-old choosing a degree today, the IFS calculator provides a sobering tool: plug in subject, university, and gender, and it spits out a lifetime earnings trajectory.
This is not an argument to abandon humanities, but a calibration of expectations. The energy transition and AI revolution will reshape demand, but the underlying pattern is clear: skills in quantitative analysis, healthcare, and technology command scarcity rents. A degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to affluence, but a lever whose force depends entirely on its geometry.
The full IFS report is available for download, with an interactive calculator that allows prospective students to run their own scenario. The message is unambiguous: choose your degree with eyes open to the hard numbers of thermodynamics, or those of the bank account.
