Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) from Universities: 2016-17: Scotland

This Official Statistics release presents employment and earnings outcomes for graduates of higher education five years after graduation.


Gender

Figure 3 shows the median total earnings for graduates from Scottish Institutions five years after graduation split by subject area and gender. It shows that male graduates in 2010/11 were earning £29,100 in 2016/17 compared to £26,000 for female graduates. In 27 out of 34 subjects, males have higher median earnings than females five years after graduation. The largest difference is seen in ‘Physics and Astronomy’, where male graduates had median total earnings of £30,100 compared to £24,700 for female graduates.

Female median earnings only exceed males in 4 out of 34 subjects five years after graduation. Of these subjects, the largest difference is seen in ‘Technology’ where females had median total earnings of £24,900 compared to £21,100 for male graduates.

Due to small numbers of male graduates for the subjects ‘Celtic Studies’ and ‘Humanities and liberal arts’, we have suppressed these figures for both genders.

‘Education and teaching’ was the only subject where the median earnings between males and females was equal. Those who graduated in this subject in 2010/11 were earning £30,300.

Median earnings can vary between subject and gender for various reasons. See ‘Data Quality’ for some of the issues to consider when looking at this data. The Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) has been used to group subjects into 34 categories. See ‘Methodology’ section for more information on the CAH.

Figure 3: Distributions of total earnings of graduates* by subject area, five year after graduation (lower quartile, median and upper quartile), male and female, Scotland, 2016/17 tax year

Figure 3: Distributions of total earnings of graduates* by subject area, five year after graduation (lower quartile, median and upper quartile), male and female, Scotland, 2016/17 tax year

*UK domiciled First degree qualifiers 2010/11.
Hours worked are not taken into account.

Table 1: Median total earnings of graduates* by subject studied and gender five years after graduation, 2016/17 tax year

Subject Median total earnings 2010/11 cohort (£)
Male Female Scotland
Medicine & Dentistry 51,900 49,100 50,500
Engineering 36,700 32,400 36,300
Economics 35,600 34,500 35,400
Veterinary sciences 37,500 34,000 34,800
Pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy 36,800 33,400 34,500
Mathematical sciences 34,400 29,900 31,500
Law 32,200 29,600 30,600
Education and teaching 30,300 30,300 30,300
Health and social care 32,900 28,300 30,000
Physics and astronomy 30,100 24,700 29,700
Architecture, building and planning 30,100 28,200 29,100
Nursing 31,000 27,200 27,400
Chemistry 28,600 26,200 27,100
Physical, material and forensic sciences 27,900 25,900 27,100
Geographical and environmental studies 26,700 27,200 27,000
Business and management 28,800 25,500 26,800
Computing 27,400 22,700 26,500
Languages, linguistics and classics 26,700 26,400 26,500
Politics 26,600 25,900 26,300
Philosophy and religious studies 27,500 25,000 26,100
History and archaeology 27,400 25,100 26,100
Subjects allied to medicine 27,000 25,300 25,500
Biosciences 27,100 24,800 25,300
Combined and general studies 27,000 23,900 24,000
Sport and exercise sciences 23,800 24,400 24,000
English studies 21,700 23,700 23,200
Technology 21,100 24,900 23,100
Agriculture, food and related subjects 23,400 23,100 23,100
Sociology, social policy and anthropology 24,600 21,600 22,500
Communications and media 22,600 22,100 22,300
Psychology 25,400 21,600 22,100
Celtic studies x x 21,400
Humanities and liberal arts (non-specific) x x 19,400
Creative arts and design 19,800 19,200 19,300
All subjects 29,100 26,000 27,100

*UK domiciled First degree qualifiers 2010/11.
Hours worked are not taken into account.
‘x’ denotes that data have been suppressed to prevent disclosure. All figures associated with cohorts smaller than 11 have been suppressed. All cells based on counts of 1 or 2 have been suppressed, and further suppression has been implemented to prevent disclosure by subtraction.

Contact

Email: FHEstatistics@gov.scot

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