Graduates earned between £10,000 and £14,000 more in their early careers than people of a similar age who did not go to university, a study has shown.
The research is the largest carried out to quantify the “graduate premium” and demonstrates that women in particular earn significantly more if they have been to university.
Male graduates earned on average £29,500 a year after working for 14 years compared with £17,000 for men who did not go to university. For women, average salaries were £21,600 for graduates and £11,000 for non-graduates.
The study, by researchers from Cambridge and Harvard universities and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, combined earnings from tax records, student loan repayments and labour force survey returns for 260,000 people across a ten-year period