Conventional wisdom tells us a university education should be a big head start on the road to a successful working life. The expectation is that by attending university a person’s earning potential will be increased. Therefore it was with interest that we at ChalkFace read this article from The Independent which shows that this assumption is not always true.
One in five people would have been better off financially had they not attended university, research has revealed.
Almost no men who study creative arts at university will make financial gains from their degrees over their lifetimes, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) suggests.
Male graduates enjoy an earnings boost of around £130,000 over the course of their working lives compared to what they would have earned if they did not go to university, while women take home about £100,000 more, the report shows.
But the research estimates that one in five people with a university education, around 70,000 for each academic year, are left worse off financially than their peers who avoided higher education.
Around 15 per cent of women and around a quarter of men have negative lifetime financial returns to undergraduate degrees, according to the analysis commissioned by the Department for Education.
As reported in early articles from Chalkface it seems that what a person chooses to do as a degree is much more important than simply having a degree. Given the financial commitment that undertaking tertiary education entails, Chalkface strongly recommends that young people consider subjects carefully when making there university course choices and not just what they think they would like to do. ITS is always happy to talk to students and parents about their different tertiary options. Come see us for a free consultation to discuss with our experienced counsellors. We can also help with your UCAS or US university applications.
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