For most students, the attractions of a degree have always been as much about what you can earn when you start work as about what you will learn. With graduates now expected to accumulate debts of up to £30,000 by the time they leave university, even the academically minded will have more than one eye on their career prospects when they choose a course.

Recent studies have suggested that higher education remains a good financial proposition, as well as broadening the mind. PricewaterhouseCoopers puts the average salary premium at £160,000 over a working lifetime, compared with those who choose to go straight into employment with two good A levels.

However, the accountancy and management consultant found big differences between subjects — a premium of less than £1,000 a year for arts graduates, for example, but almost ten times more for those with a medical degree.

While the majority of graduate jobs do not demand a particular subject, the annual employment statistics tell a different story. When the Higher Education Statistics Agency collects its figures, six months after graduation, significant differences are already beginning to appear.

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Some are predictable — such as the clear lead in graduate salaries enjoyed by medics and dentists. But many will be surprised to learn that graduate nurses earn £1,000 a year more than their counterparts in business studies, and that psychology (one of the boom subjects of recent years) languishes near the bottom of the salary league.

Social work is another surprise inclusion in the Top Ten for graduate pay. Indeed, Hay Management Consultants has reported that public sector starting salaries now outstrip the average for private companies, although surveys in mid-career, let alone those of top management salaries, inevitably tell a different story.

Engineers also do well for initial earnings, with all branches of the discipline averaging at least £20,000 a year in 2005. But some big subjects, such as English and biological sciences, are to be found near the foot of the table, with starting salaries for graduate jobs close to £17,000 and the average for non-graduate work below £14,000.

There are similar variations in immediate graduate employment rates, when jobs are classified according to the skills required and the likelihood of progression into normal graduate careers.

There was no measurable unemployment among graduates of medical and dental schools in 2004-05, and very little among nurses, vets, civil engineers or those taking education degrees.

Graduates generally are much less likely than the rest of the population to be unemployed, although the jobless rate reaches 10 per cent in electrical and electronic engineering, computing and art and design.

But more than a quarter of all those completing their degrees start their careers in “non-graduate” jobs, and the proportion exceeds 40 per cent in some subjects.

As the table of earnings here shows, the salary gap between the two types of job can be considerable and, while it is normal to take a menial job to establish a foothold in the performing arts, sport or tourism, the starting point may be a better guide to future prospects in more traditional graduate occupations.

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