According to Chart 4 of 2011/12 destination of leavers from higher education, published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the highest unemployment rates for UK resident graduates with first degrees six months after finishing their course are those who took Computer Science, with 14.4% of that year’s cohort failing to find a job.
However, all is not bleak as the Times Higher Education would like to paint these findings (“Try turning it off and on again“) for people wanting to follow the same career path I started down some 28 years ago.
60.7% of Computer Science graduates do find a full-time job within six months of leaving university – which compares very well against Law (34.9% – however, another 30.4% of Law graduates go onto further study – the highest percentage of all subjects), Historical and Philosophical Studies (40.5%), Biological Sciences (41.9%) and Physical Sciences (also 41.9%).
The only substantially better rates of full-time employment for people with first degrees are in subjects related to medicine (human and animal). But if you stick to programming, at least there’s no chance of getting covered in oozy, yukky stuff.