Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) from Univerisities: 2016/17: Scotland

Gender

Figure 3 shows the median total earnings for graduates from Scottish Institutions five years after graduation split by subject area and gender. It shows that male graduates in 2010/11 were earning £29,100 in 2016/17 compared to £26,000 for female graduates. In 27 out of 34 subjects, males have higher median earnings than females five years after graduation. The largest difference is seen in ‘Physics and Astronomy’, where male graduates had median total earnings of £30,100 compared to £24,700 for female graduates.

Female median earnings only exceed males in 4 out of 34 subjects five years after graduation. Of these subjects, the largest difference is seen in ‘Technology’ where females had median total earnings of £24,900 compared to £21,100 for male graduates.

Due to small numbers of male graduates for the subjects ‘Celtic Studies’ and ‘Humanities and liberal arts’, we have suppressed these figures for both genders.

‘Education and teaching’ was the only subject where the median earnings between males and females was equal. Those who graduated in this subject in 2010/11 were earning £30,300.

Median earnings can vary between subject and gender for various reasons. See ‘Data Quality’ for some of the issues to consider when looking at this data. The Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) has been used to group subjects into 34 categories. See ‘Methodology’ section for more information on the CAH.

Figure 3: Distributions of total earnings of graduates* by subject area, five year after graduation (lower quartile, median and upper quartile), male and female, Scotland, 2016/17 tax year

*UK domiciled First degree qualifiers 2010/11.
Hours worked are not taken into account.

Table 1: Median total earnings of graduates* by subject studied and gender five years after graduation, 2016/17 tax year

*UK domiciled First degree qualifiers 2010/11.
Hours worked are not taken into account.
‘x’ denotes that data have been suppressed to prevent disclosure. All figures associated with cohorts smaller than 11 have been suppressed. All cells based on counts of 1 or 2 have been suppressed, and further suppression has been implemented to prevent disclosure by subtraction.