Getting a job that you couldn't have got without your degree isn't the be-all-and-end-all of going to university, but it does help take a little of the sting out of those tuition fees.
Whatever your degree is in, it's bound to be beneficial for your career in one way or another, but new research shows that certain degrees are more likely to help land you a highly skilled job than others.
The research from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) found that the more vocational links attached to your degree, the more likely you are to end up in a well-paid, skilled job within six months of graduation.
To determine how vocational a subject is, HEFCE calculated an occupations subject concentration ratio (OSCR) for all subjects with more than 25 graduates between 2012-13 and 2015-16. They used information from the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey on the number of graduates from a subject area who are employed in a narrow set of occupations.
Dentistry, Nursing and Teacher training topped the list of degrees with the most vocational links, with almost all graduates going on to get highly skilled jobs in related professions. Other subjects deemed to have strong vocational links include Civil Engineering, Information Technology and Landscape Design.
That's not to say that studying supposedly less vocational subjects such as Psychology, Modern Foreign Languages or Art is bad news for graduates in their early careers. The OSCR shows that although vocational degrees are more likely to lead to highly-skilled employment sooner after university, they also offer clearer but fewer employment options which can be restrictive for graduates who aren't sure of what they want to do as a career.
Meanwhile, less vocational degrees offer a broader range of employment options, benefiting graduates who are yet to decide which career path they want to take.
Here are the 10 subjects most likely to lead to highly skilled graduate employment:
1. Adult nursing
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 99.9%
2. Dentistry
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 99.8%
3. Teacher training
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 99.1%
4. Architecture
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 97.2%
5. Marketing
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 94.4%
6. Journalism
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 93.5%
7. Design studies
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 93.0%
8. Mathematics
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 92.8%
9. Law
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 92.7%
10. Business studies
Predicted probability of highly skilled employment: 92.2%