I was contacted by someone who had, towards the end of Year 11, come in to my office for two weeks of work experience. Now that they had started Year 12, they wanted to know what were the likely salaries were of Civil Engineers who had been to university. This was from the point of view of balancing the cost of getting a degree and taking out a student loan, and the point at which their future earnings would have made it worthwhile.
This morning, I decided to give them as best an answer as I could muster after only one cup of coffee, and I thought I would share it to see what you think:
In answer to your question – it depends. I think you need to see if you can find out the basis of how each salary has been arrived at. For example, a director of a large consulting civil engineering company will earn substantially more than one of their employees in a role with no management responsibility. Both may be Chartered Engineers, both perfectly happy with their career and work-life balance, but each will be earning wildly different salaries. There are also differences between engineers that work out on site for Contractors, and those that are based in offices with Consulting Engineers. This is reflected in other professions – for example between solicitors and barristers, and GP’s and hospital doctors – and you sometimes find one stream earning more in the early stages of a career, before been overtaken by their colleagues who have taken the other path.
Let us take me as a specific example. I am a Chartered Structural Engineer with over 17 years’ experience of working in consulting engineering, and I am based here in the West Midlands.
– If I were to take on the role of an Engineer – doing day to day calculations, co-coordinating drawings, writing reports etc. – but based elsewhere in Birmingham, I would expect a salary of up to £32,000 per year.
– If I took on a role with a bit more management responsibility, such as managing a small team of fellow Engineers – i.e. the role of a Senior Engineer – I would expect up to £37,000.
– If I was to run a slightly larger section of Engineers, and also be responsible for running that part of the company’s finances and winning them new work – i.e. the role of an Associate – I would expect to be earning up to about £45,000.
– Finally, if I were one of a number of directors of a company, but with responsibility for running an office of over 20 people, I would expect to be earning from about £55,000 upwards – but also sharing in the profits of the company too.
In theory, I could be doing any of those jobs – and the salaries for each of these roles will also vary depending where in the UK I chose to work.
When you combine this with the fact that there is a significant amount of career propaganda between the various professions – they are all trying to entice people like you into choosing their profession – the reality can be somewhat difficult to ascertain.
Have you done statistics in mathematics yet? If so, for each profession, do you have enough information to calculate the mean, mode and median salary figure at a certain number of years after graduation for each profession you are considering? Do the quoted salaries list what has been assumed – in terms of the responsibilities involved in the role, and the percentage of graduates who progress in their careers to that level? Looking at it from that viewpoint may help you see where the truth lies for you.
You also could use mathematics to look at the way your salary will increase over time, the level any student loan will reach at the end of university, the likely rate of inflation and the interest rate on your loan. Any mathematics teacher worth their salt will be able to show you how you can then calculate the point at which you break even – and I very much doubt that it is 28 years, even for a five-year course.
Slightly more difficult to calculate is the cost of not doing something. What is the cost to you of not doing a degree, in terms of future earning power. There is a lot of conflicting data out there.
So perhaps you need to think of it this way. If you are doing something you love, you will be happy. If you in a career that is earning millions, but it is destroying your soul, you hate what you do, and you are deeply unhappy, what is the true worth of things then? Yes, you need to ensure that you enter a career that will ensure you can pay back your student loan. But if you enter a profession that you find you absolutely abhor and you have to leave, what is the cost then of your wasted degree? The decision is difficult one, but you have to try to balance your heart and your head when you make your choice.
Finally, there is a way to both spread the cost of a degree, and also be earning as you learn. If you find a place at a company that is willing to support you, you could do a part-time degree. This will mean that you will get paid a regular salary for the three or four days a week you work for them in term time, but be free to attend university for one or two days a week. Often, this means that you earn enough not to have to take out a loan to pay for the course fees of for your living costs – and some rare companies will even pay your course fees too if you commit to stay with the company for two or three years after you have graduated. Choosing this path does mean that it will take you longer to complete the course, but the flip side to that is that the theoretical learning you pick up on the course you will be able to translate into practical knowledge at your work. It is not for everyone, but it is becoming increasingly common across many professions.
I hope the above overview helps. Best of luck!
Good piece for young students. You should also remark that a Civil Engineering degree is a good grounding for going into other businesses in the future, after University or qualification.
Many business men & women have trained in Civil (& other) Engineering and taken these skills into other business areas.