Top 10 for value added to economics graduate wages

Essex is in the top 10 for the value added to the earnings of our economics graduates, according to a new ranking by The Economist.

The ranking compared earnings five years after graduation with expected earnings for graduates of 124 universities, to identify the institutions which make the biggest positive impact on their students.

Dr Kate Rockett, Head of our Department of Economics said: “These figures hammer home the message of the value added by Essex Economics.  We now offer employability training including a formal employability programme with an extensive and growing full year work placement programme, interview skills, an expanded Study Abroad programme that gives international experience crucial for any CV, and an in-class programme covering all aspects of job search. This has helped our students get jobs when they graduate and will continue to support our students in future.”

The Economist article accompanying the ranking also identified that salaries for economics graduates are among the top five highest in the UK alongside other fields that include quantitative training.

The result reinforces our University’s recent Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The TEF Panel said that at Essex “students from all backgrounds achieve outstanding outcomes with regards to continuation and progression to highly skilled employment or further study, notably exceeding the University’s benchmark”.

The high standard of our teaching is reflected in our student satisfaction scores, with the recent National Student Survey (NSS) placing us 14^th in England for overall student satisfaction, and our Department of Economics ranked in the top 25% nationally.