When deciding what to study at university, a student must balance following their passion and enhancing their employment prospects, particularly if from less affluent backgrounds. A tough graduate job market – with Oxbridge students’ 16.5% internship success rate, while higher than the national average, still not entirely promising – drives many to pick the latter.

Furthermore, the cost of higher education means the majority of home students leave university in debt, under pressure to make a return on investment. This is even more true for international students, who usually pay more than three times the home fees and must meet visa salary requirements if they plan on working in the UK.

Lia, a first year law student at Lucy Cavendish, said that employability and long-term stability were, “definitely important [in degree choice], especially coming from a background where I had no safety net. If I was in a very high economic bracket, I probably wouldn’t have even gone to university in the first place”. The weight of financial responsibility clearly impacts the way subjects are chosen, causing some to choose subjects that they are not “strictly passionate” about.

“I love English […] and I am so happy that I get to study this subject here.”

On the contrary, Sally, a second-year English student, commented that “the main factor” in her decision-making process was her love for English: “I love English - reading was always such a massive and meaningful part of my life. I grew up surrounded by books and I am so happy that I get to study this subject here.”

According to HESA’s Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), 87.3% of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences graduates find graduate-level employment, further study or travel opportunities, or care roles, in comparison to 92.7% of STEM graduates. The employment gap exists between ‘employable’ STEM subjects and their ‘jobless’ humanities counterparts, but it is not the chasm that is typically expected. Degree choice also appears to be declining in relevance for employability. “Most career options are open to graduates from any discipline,” comments the Careers Service. “Graduate recruiters are very often looking for students from a wide variety of courses, and it is common to find science graduates working in communication and media roles, and arts graduates in finance.”

Hugh Jones, an English graduate now studying the Management Tripos at Magdalene, applied to do it in his fourth year in a “bit of a panic” when he was facing unemployment towards the end of his third year as an English student. While this move may seem like a textbook example of “a McKinsey consultant luring an honest student away from the sound anti-capitalist principles of the English or History Faculty with a bag full of tainted money,” Hugh comments that it has been “a pretty great swap […] I genuinely find finance and economics really interesting, so while I did it for the employability, it has still been really intellectually stretching.”

“Degree choice appears to be declining in relevance for employability.”

In some ways, monetising your passion has become more attainable – as Mae, a second-year HSPS student, points out, the job market has diversified in recent years, allowing some people to “profit off of what they are passionate about without relying on traditional career paths.”

However, such paths are hard to pursue in the absence of a financial safety net. The pressure students feel to choose “the right degree” is often a proxy for something much deeper: a lack of government funding for creative industries, accessible career progression, and industries that pay livable wages. As Hugh puts it: “I don’t think publishing [for example] is inaccessible because an English degree helps you get a publishing job […] If publishing is inaccessible, it is because it doesn’t pay very well, which is also why English degrees don’t lead to particularly high salaries.”

Ultimately, whether you live and breathe your subject, or view it with a fond but detached curiosity, it’s worth remembering that the degree itself is only one piece of the employment puzzle. The decision to pursue a passion irrespective of the circumstances we hail from should not be an act of bravery at all, it should be a viable option accessible to everyone.