What happens if I choose...?
Two real slices of published DfE data, side by side — not a combined score, and not a comparison the underlying data was never actually measured for.
This page lets you look directly at two pieces of DfE evidence this chapter has already shown in full: graduate outcomes by subject (Chapter 10E), and outcomes for people who didn't go to university, by GCSE attainment (Chapter 10D). It does not combine them into a single ranking or score — the two are measured differently, on different cohorts, and doing so would invent a precision the data doesn't have.
The explorer
Median earnings, 5 years on
£56,400
Middle half of graduates: £48,100–£68,100
All subjects, for comparison: £33,300
Sustained employment or further study
92.4%
80.1% in sustained employment only
6,970 graduates in this cohort
Cohort: graduated 2017/18, tracked 5 years to the 2023-24 tax year. Source: DfE, "Graduate labour market outcomes (LEO): 2023 to 2024". Industry, not occupation — this data cannot show a specific job or employer.
What this explorer deliberately leaves out
Apprenticeship earnings by level
Chapter 10C names this as a genuine gap: DfE's Further Education Outcomes release has earnings-by-level data, but it hasn't been built into a pipeline yet. Adding an "apprenticeship route" tab without that data would mean guessing, so this explorer doesn't have one.
A combined subject × horizon × route selector
Full 1/3/5/10-year trajectories only exist, in this codebase, for the three subjects shown on Chapter 10E's trajectory chart. Every other subject only has a real 5-year figure. Letting you pick "Computing at 1 year" would silently interpolate a number nobody published.
A defensible single lifetime-return figure
The mandate is explicit: no fabricated unified score, no false-precision cross-dataset ranking. A genuine lifetime-return estimate needs the full regression models behind Chapter 10D's KS2/GCSE research — reusable as reported statements, not as an interactive slider without redoing that modelling.
Student-finance exposure and skills-demand overlay
Chapter 11 (student finance) and Chapter 10F (skills gap) are built at a different level of aggregation — a whole-cohort loan-repayment forecast and a UK-wide vacancy count, neither of which reduces to a per-person figure this explorer could show alongside a subject or route without inventing the link.
Related pages
- In this sectionDegrees: what happens next?The full subject-by-subject breakdown this explorer draws its university figures from.
- In this sectionWhat was the qualification worth?The full post-16 pathway comparison this explorer draws its no-degree figures from.
- In this sectionFrom classroom to workThe rest of this chapter.
- In this sectionEducationThe other chapters, and how this section is built.
Scope and definitions
England, not the UK
Education is devolved. Every figure on this page is England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland operate different frameworks with different legal definitions, and their figures are not directly comparable.
Two different populations, never combined
The subject tab covers England-provider first-degree graduates (LEO). The no-degree tab covers the GCSE 2012/13 cohort tracked ten years, not restricted to any particular institution. This page shows them side by side, but never adds, ranks or scores them against each other.