Which university degrees pay the most?

School-leavers aiming for a well-paid job after university should study engineering or health sciences, a new government report suggests.

Meanwhile, those less concerned about salary should consider tourism, performing arts, visual arts, and graphic and design arts.

The other lesson is that sticking at your studies can pay off - graduates with a doctorate can expect to pick up jobs with salaries almost 50 percent higher than those with bachelor degrees.

The report, which delves into what students can expect to earn after they have completed their tertiary education, is based on data collected from nearly 30,000 young people who last enrolled in a tertiary education institute in 2003.

Prepared by the Ministry of Education and Statistics New Zealand, it looks at what young people were earning both one year and three years after they completed their tertiary studies.

This information is important not only to the government, which ploughs around $4.8 billion into the tertiary education sector each year, but also to students - and their parents - who are paying hefty tertiary fees and want to see a return on their investment.

Around half a million New Zealanders enrol in some form of institution-based learning each year, and about 100,000 qualifications are awarded annually.

The report shows the importance of both what you study (some subjects lead to higher-paid jobs) and where you study (university degrees end up around 8 percent more lucrative than those from polytechnics).

Graduates with a Bachelor of Arts - the most common degree in New Zealand and the degree on which salaries in the report are benchmarked - can expect to earn around $30,800 in their first year of work and $40,100 by their third year, while those who gain a degree in sciences can expect to start work on around $32,900 a year, jumping to $42,200 by the third year of employment.

By comparison, students who specialise in medical studies can expect to be earning 2.59 times more than those with a Bachelor of Arts after three years in the workforce.

Other high-earning fields were veterinary studies (1.61 times more pay than humanities), law (1.47), electrical engineering (1.44), pharmacy (1.43), accountancy (1.42), computer science (1.36) and nursing (1.26).

Degrees in teaching earn 1.27 times more in the first year, but by the third year that advantage dips to a factor of 1.16 times. Graduates with degrees in tourism, performing arts, visual arts, and graphic and design arts earn between 10 percent and 20 percent less than those degrees in humanities. However, degrees in communication and media studies earn 11 percent more.

Report author David Scott said the research showed that having a tertiary qualification did have a significant bearing on earning potential.

Among young students, those who completed their degree earned 29 percent more than those who dropped out.

One crucial difference is that graduates appear better set for growth in earnings as time passes: the median post-study earnings for young people completing a tertiary qualification rose by 30 percent in the three years after graduation, compared with 8 percent growth over the same period for workers without a tertiary qualification.

Scott's research is part of a joint government agency project that tracks the relationship between education and employment.

"There is an established relationship between certain fields of study and future income," Scott said.

"Prospective students know, for example, that doctors and lawyers are likely to command higher income than those who graduate in other fields.

"For some students, the choice of what field to study will be influenced by what income they are likely to receive, however, for many students the choice of what to study is influenced by a range of other factors, such as their pre-disposed ability ... or parental influence."

Auckland careers consultant Jo Mills cautions new graduates on making job choices based on salary alone: "Often there are other factors that make us excited about going to work. There is other value your employer will add to your career that you should take into account."

Megan Smith, a Hamilton careers adviser and president of the Career Development Association of New Zealand, said the high costs of tertiary education meant young people were now making more considered decisions about their courses.

"I've seen an increase in school leavers doing gap years and that type of thing, so that they can be sure, when they do start their tertiary training, that they have a good idea of where it will lead them."

- © Fairfax NZ News