Methodology

Original analysis of published fee evidence

Our international tuition evidence audit publishes a dated snapshot, record-level university sources and downloadable data. It separates annual fees from programme amounts and unresolved coverage. Its deliberately selected catalogue sample is not a national survey or university ranking.

Official extracts

Which official data do we use?

All salary and employment figures come from the Department for Education's Graduate labour market outcomes (LEO)release for the 2023–24 tax year, published on 25 June 2026 under the Open Government Licence v3.0. We use three of its files:

• CAH level 3 subject data: median, lower- and upper-quartile earnings, sustained employment or further study rates and graduate counts, 1, 3, 5 and 10 years after graduation, for 164 subjects. Our graduate salaries table shows every row.
• Industry data (3-digit SIC): the industries graduates of each CAH level 2 subject area work in, with median earnings by industry.
• Provider-level dashboard data: earnings and outcomes by university and CAH level 2 subject area. 144 of the 148 universities in our index are matched, by UKPRN or, where our record has no UKPRN, by exact official provider name. Northern Ireland providers are not in this file.

We do not use HESA Graduate Outcomes survey data. Scripts in our source repository download these files and extract the figures without rounding, estimating or adjusting them.

What do the figures mean?

• Population: UK-domiciled first-degree graduates. Subject-level data covers English higher education providers and higher education institutions in Scotland and Wales.
• Earnings: gross annual earnings from HMRC records for graduates in sustained employment. PAYE earnings are annualised; self-employed income is included where reported. LEO cannot tell full-time from part-time work.
• Sustained employment: paid work for at least one day in five of the six months from October to March of the tax year.
• Years after graduation: each column describes a different graduating cohort measured in the same tax year, for example 2021/22 graduates at one year and 2017/18 graduates at five years. The difference is not one person's pay rise.
• Middle half: the range from the lower quartile to the upper quartile of earnings.
• All-graduate benchmark: the Great Britain total for higher education institutions in the provider-level file.

How are subjects matched to the data?

Each CourseToJob subject is mapped to one CAH level 3 row and, through it, to its CAH level 2 subject area. We do not average sibling subjects. Criminology and International Relations have no CAH level 3 row in this extract, so their pages show no earnings figure. Industry and university figures are published only at CAH level 2, so Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering share the "Engineering" area, and Business Management, Accounting and Finance and Marketing share "Business and management". Pages say which level a table uses.

Which thresholds and calculations do we apply?

• Headline "highest" and "lowest" subject lists include only subjects with at least 100 graduates in the cohort. The full table shows every subject with its graduate count.
• "Highest-earning universities" lists on subject pages include only universities with at least 50 graduates measured in that subject area; university pages name a top subject area only where at least 20 graduates were measured.
• Subject ranks count only subjects with a published median for that year after graduation.
• Industry shares are our calculation from DfE's rounded counts, across all industries including "not known".
• Nothing is adjusted for inflation; trend charts are in cash terms.

University differences reflect entry qualifications, subject mix, where graduates live and work and other factors, as well as the course. They are not a ranking of teaching quality. Where DfE suppresses a small cohort or publishes no value, we show a dash or say the figure is not published. We do not estimate, mock or recall missing numbers from memory.

Editorial text

The “you may like it if” and “you may not if” bullets, apprenticeship notes, job-description illustrations, interview question types, and the university–subject links are editorial. They carry anEditorial label, they are not HESA or LEO figures, and they are never attributed to a named employer.

Interview notes

Each subject page includes an editorial set of first-job interview question types, tied to the entry-level roles on that page. They are illustrations of what those interviews tend to test, not a question bank from a named employer and not a guarantee of what you will be asked. We do not publish pass rates, model answers, or coaching scores.

Where a UK undergraduate course commonly interviews applicants (for example medicine, nursing, teacher training, social work, physiotherapy, pharmacy, and architecture), we add a short admissions note and a link to an official page. Format is always set by the university or training provider. Confirm there. CourseToJob is not a careers service and does not run mock interviews.

Student finance and tax

We do not publish take-home pay calculations: tuition caps, loan thresholds, PAYE bands and National Insurance rates change each year and depend on your plan and nation, so check them on GOV.UK. England starters from 1 August 2023 are Plan 5; Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland use different plans. International students have no UK student-loan line here, and we do not publish a typical international fee, because tuition is set by the university rather than a UK fee cap.

Visas

A Skilled Worker decision is made per occupation. It uses the higher of the general threshold and the SOC going rate published on GOV.UK, so a subject-level LEO median is not sufficient. We do not place a visa-viable or sponsorship badge on any subject. SeeSkilled Worker job rules on GOV.UK.

Vacancies

Live listings are requested from Adzuna when credentials are configured. We search the entry-level role titles on the subject page, not the degree name, so a Computer Science page looks for “junior software developer” rather than “computer science”. If credentials are missing or the API errors, the page shows an empty state. We never seed placeholder vacancies.

Pay on a vacancy card is the employer-listed salary from that advert. Adzuna also returns estimated “Jobsworth” salaries; we drop those so an estimate is never shown as listed pay. Official LEO figures stay in the outcomes tables and are never mixed with vacancy pay.

The job-description text is Adzuna’s snippet from the live advert, not our editorial illustration. The full description and the apply form stay on Adzuna. Listings are labelled “Jobs by Adzuna”.

University provision index

We list 148 UK universities and link each of them to one or more of the 30 subjects on this site. The same subject page is reused wherever more than one university is indexed for that course. That many-to-many map is an editorial provision index, not an official extract from UCAS or HESA Discover Uni. A university may offer more, fewer, or differently named courses than we show. Always confirm on UCAS before you apply.

The university list follows the recognised UK universities table atList of universities in the United Kingdom(which tracks the GOV.UK recognised-bodies list). Medicine, pharmacy, architecture, and specialist institutions are mapped conservatively. Official websites are taken from Wikidata when present. University pages show DfE LEO provider-level earnings by subject area where DfE publishes them. We do not publish league-table ranks or student headcounts, and we do not sell featured university listings.

Programme and scholarship records

The programme finder is a small, separately curated selection of exact university courses. Each record identifies the qualification, intake, duration, requirements, source and review date. A price is shown only with its published fee period and basis. Missing or unverified prices remain unfilled; we do not roll an older price into a new intake or multiply an annual fee into an assumed course total.

The scholarship finder links to official funding providers. Country and level filters identify opportunities to research, not an eligibility decision. Past application rounds are labelled. Amounts, residence conditions, participating courses and deadlines must be checked with the provider before applying. A scholarship listing does not establish that it funds a programme listed here.

We record review due dates and use automated checks to flag source access problems, changed pages and expired deadlines. These checks support editorial review; they do not automatically approve new fees or admissions requirements. The official provider remains the authority. CourseToJob does not sell placement in either finder.

Applications

Undergraduate applications are made on UCAS. CourseToJob only links out to search a subject or a university there.

Design and accessibility

Pages are designed around Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 level AA: 19px body type, a 5px spacing scale, always-visible underlines on content links, a skip link, a 3px ink focus ring, form labels and hints, and generously sized controls. Automated accessibility checks support manual keyboard and layout review; they do not establish complete conformance. The header is not sticky, so a focused control is not hidden behind it. Colours are CourseToJob’s own (plum and warm neutrals), not the GOV.UK palette, so this site cannot be mistaken for a government service.

CourseToJob is not a GOV.UK service. We do not use the crown, the GDS Transport typeface, or any mark that would suggest government affiliation. Manrope and Source Sans 3 are used under the SIL Open Font Licence.