Value of a degree

Universities UK releases its' highly-anticipated report (well, highly-anticipated by me) on the current rates of return to degrees in the UK today.
The figure the analysts from PWC and London Economics have come up with is £160,000 as the average amount a degree graduate can earn over a lifetime compared to an equivalent with 2 A-levels who didn't go to university. As with a lot of these things, though, there is a large range - a medic can expect over £340k more than someone without a degree, whilst an arts graduate gets about £34,500.

The interesting bits will be in the detail, though. The report will also explain how benefits will increase as you get older - hardly surprising, but a good explanation for why newspapers 'universities are a waste of time' articles only ever interview people who've just graduated. (I wrote a hugely scathing piece about this terrible Sunday Times article, and then decided not to post it as I fear that the researchers may have got some stats from, er, me.)
This £160,000 figure chimes in with other recent surveys - some reports are still quoting the widely-discredited £400,000 figure the Government used a few years back to justify top-up fees, but nobody within or without the system has believed this for years, and even the TDA, a Government agency, has been using a figure of £120-150k as a benchmark in literature for a while now.
It will be interesting to see how the Press report it. I predict a lot of 'It's barely worth doing an arts degree' stories.

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