10 Lowest-Return Degrees
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Not all university degrees are created equal. While some subjects consistently lead to high salaries, excellent career prospects, and strong job security, others leave graduates struggling to earn enough to justify the cost of their education. Research into graduate lifetime earnings shows that your choice of degree can be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of your career. In fact, choosing the right subject may be even more important than choosing the right university.
The following ten subjects are identified by Institute for Fiscal Studies as delivering the weakest, and in many cases negative, individual financial returns. Graduates from these courses frequently end up financially worse off than peers with the same A-level results who went directly into the workforce after school. Nevertheless, this does not mean these subjects have no value. It means that if financial return is a significant factor in your decision, which it should be, given the cost of a UK degree, these fields require particularly careful consideration of institution quality, career planning, and likely postgraduate requirements.
| Rank | Degree and Lifetime Return | Why it Delivers Lower Financial Returns |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Performing Arts -£43,000 |
Includes Music, Drama, and Dance. Careers are often freelance, project-based, and highly competitive, producing unstable income and lower average lifetime financial returns. |
| #2 | Creative Arts -£40,000 |
Encompasses Design, Fashion, and Media Arts. While creatively fulfilling, the sector is characterised by freelance and portfolio-based work, with highly variable and often suppressed earnings. |
| #3 | Philosophy -£9,000 |
Valued for critical thinking and argumentation, but it lacks a direct vocational pathway, making graduate earnings highly dependent on later career choices, conversion courses, or postgraduate study. |
| #4 | Languages -£6,000 |
Covers Linguistics and Modern Foreign Languages. While language skills are valuable, the degree itself, without a vocational specialism, can correlate with below-average financial returns. |
| #5 | English £9,000 |
Covers Creative Writing and Literature. A respected humanities subject with broad transferable skills, but graduate earnings are often limited by indirect career pathways and competitive creative or education-related sectors. |
| #6 | Agriculture £24,000 |
Includes Forestry and Food Science. Despite the strategic importance of food security, graduate salaries remain structurally low relative to the duration and cost of study. |
| #7 | Geography £26,000 |
Develops strong analytical and environmental knowledge, but career outcomes vary widely because the degree often leads into broad public-sector, education, planning, or policy roles rather than a single high-paying profession. |
| #8 | Media £29,000 |
Includes journalism, publishing, and digital media. Graduate earnings are constrained by competitive entry-level roles, freelance work, and disruption across traditional media industries. |
| #9 | Biosciences £32,000 |
Provides valuable laboratory and analytical skills, but many entry-level roles in research, healthcare support, and life sciences require further qualifications before graduates can access higher salaries. |
| #10 | General Sciences £36,000 |
Offers broad scientific training but often lacks the direct professional pathway associated with medicine, engineering, or computing, meaning financial returns depend heavily on postgraduate study or sector choice. |
This is not an argument against university. It is an argument for going in with your eyes open. The IFS data is clear: subject choice is one of the two most important variables determining graduate outcomes. Check out 10 Highest-Return Degrees before you make your decision.
