Where Not to Study Law, Accounting, Computer Science or Economics

If you plan to begin university in September 2027, choosing the right course and institution could be one of the most important decisions you make.

With graduate employment prospects becoming increasingly uncertain, the almost £50,000 cost of earning a degree in England and Wales deserves serious consideration. Tuition fees alone will exceed £10,000 a year from next September.

The idea that any degree is automatically better than no degree no longer holds true. In the four subjects examined below, the employment record of courses ranked among the bottom five is so weak that taking on the cost of studying them may be difficult to justify.

The four subjects – accounting, law, computer science and economics – are areas in which strong graduate employment outcomes should be expected. Those outcomes are measured by the proportion of graduates securing high-skilled jobs within 15 months of leaving university.

Accounting and law degrees provide direct routes into accountancy and legal careers. Computer science graduates are helping drive some of the most significant technological advances in history, while economists are hardly associated with poor financial prospects.

However, a course that performs poorly at one university should not be taken as a reflection of everything that institution offers. Even universities near the top of our overall ranking can record weak graduate employment results in individual subjects. Equally, some of the universities identified below as offering poor value for money in these four subjects may provide much stronger prospects in other areas.

For each subject, we highlight comparable courses at other universities that require the same entry grades but deliver significantly better graduate employment outcomes.

Yet, as the panels below demonstrate, very few universities can promise excellent graduate outcomes across every subject in what is the most challenging jobs market for graduates in a generation. For prospective students, the message is clear: buyer beware.

Accounting and finance

If you choose to study accounting, it is reasonable to assume that you hope to become an accountant after graduating.

That result is almost five times more likely for accounting graduates at the London School of Economics, where 97.7% secure high-skilled employment within 15 months of leaving, than at Coventry University, where the equivalent rate is just 19.3%.

With average student loan debt now above £47,900, choosing Coventry in this particular case does not appear to be a sensible investment. Graduate employability data used in our subject rankings – in which Coventry ranks 82nd and last for accounting – indicates that students are unlikely to become accountants or secure another high-skilled job, making the degree a poor use of both money and time.

Coventry is not the only university offering an accounting degree that appears to provide a weak route into the profession. Buckinghamshire New records a high-skilled employment rate of 28.1%, followed by Greater Manchester at 28.3%, Bedfordshire at 34.5%, Sunderland at 40.9% and even the well-respected Soas, University of London, at 42.3%. In each case, relatively few graduates secure high-skilled jobs.

These universities also tend to sit near the bottom of the employment rankings for the related subject of finance. Coventry performs slightly better in finance, with a high-skilled employment rate of 30%, narrowly ahead of Buckinghamshire New at 28.1%, the weakest result in the subject. Bedfordshire and Soas record the same proportion of finance students entering high-skilled employment as their accounting graduates, while Sunderland’s rate for finance graduates is only 32.9%.

Coventry offers a range of accounting and finance courses. Options include accounting and finance, accountancy, and banking and finance at Coventry itself; professional accounting at CU Dagenham; financial management and accounting at CU Coventry; and international finance and accounting at Coventry University London.

The accountancy courses require 120 UCAS points, equivalent to BBB at A-level, while accounting and finance and banking and finance require 112 points, or BBC.

However, it is not difficult to find universities with much stronger high-skilled employment rates for accounting graduates. Northumbria, for example, records a rate of 78.1% – four times Coventry’s figure – and offers places on its BSc accounting programme to students with between 96 and 112 UCAS points, equivalent to CCC to BBC.

And Reading, with its world-renowned Henley Business School, had places in Clearing this year on its BSc in accounting and finance for as low as BCC, with ABB the current asking rate for September 2027 admission.

Law

A 9% rise in the number of acceptances on to Law degrees in 2025 took the total of first-year lawyers above 30,000 for the first time. (There were 32,440 of them to be exact.)

But the latest graduate employment data suggests three in every ten of them will not be in high-skilled jobs 15 months after graduating; in other words they will not have embarked on a legal career. Some will come to it later, of course, and some will have studied law and decided a related career is not for them. But some will also be paralegal-ing (for which a degree is not necessary) or still looking for a way into a profession for which their law degree was not a golden ticket.

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At Wolverhampton (where 39.2% of law graduates find high-skilled jobs), Huddersfield (41.1%), Oxford Brookes (42.9%) and Greenwich (43.2%), the number of graduates getting high-skilled jobs (probably on the bottom rung of the legal profession) is roughly half that at the most successful law degrees for launching graduate careers.

Three Russell Group universities are in the top five – Cambridge (93.1%), the London School of Economics (90.4%) and Nottingham (85%). But so, too, are Middlesex (91.1%) and Staffordshire, the Daily Mail Modern University of the Year (90.9%) – proof that at subject level, no ‘type’ of university has a monopoly on outstanding levels of graduate employment.

And the entry requirements for those at the top and bottom of the law job rankings show the value of choosing carefully.

At Oxford Brookes, which sits third-bottom of the ranking, a typical offer is 120 UCAS points (BBB at A-level), which is more than at Staffordshire, based in Stoke-on-Trent, which comes third at the opposite end of the ranking and where the typical offer is BBC.

And law at Middlesex, based in Hendon, north London and second only to Cambridge, makes offers in the range of 80 to 112 UCAS points, equivalent to CDD to BBC at A-level, while Wolverhampton at the bottom of the law jobs ranking makes a typical offer of CCC or BCD (96 points), exactly in the middle of Middlesex’s offer range.

Computer science

More than 36,000 students were admitted to computing degrees in 2025, making it one of the most popular subject areas. The importance of digital literacy has never been higher, with the march of artificial intelligence through the workplace worldwide. The University of Birmingham now offers students a full year of computer science within all degrees, such is the subject’s importance.

Most of those studying computer science full-time will envisage a career working in a related field. But as with other career-focused degrees, outcomes vary considerably among the 94 universities in our computer science subject table, which can be found via the subject dropdown menu using our University Finder.

Computer science is one of a very small number of subjects to show a 100% graduate employment record in high-skilled jobs at the leading universities. Computer scientists, as are doctors, are very much in demand.

Imperial College London, St Andrews, Cambridge and University College London all saw every one of their computer science graduates in high-skilled employment 15 months after graduating in summer 2024, according to the latest graduate outcomes. Leeds completes the top five with a 98.4% rate.

At the other end of the scale, jobs success rates are half that – or less – at Roehampton (45.7%), Kingston (47.2%), Bedfordshire (50%), London Metropolitan (50.9%) and Southampton Solent (53.3%). But even then, such is the demand for computer scientists that these rates of high-skilled employment even at the worst-performing universities are ten to 20 percentage points better than the worst performers in other subjects with less graduate demand.

The most successful universities for landing computer science graduates good jobs are members of the 24-strong Russell Group of research-led universities, who claim 20 of the top 26 places in the subject’s jobs ranking. The only non-Russell Group institutions in the top 26 are St Andrews, Bath, Royal Holloway University of London, York St John, Loughborough and Sussex. At all of these, the high-skilled jobs rate is more than 88.5%.

York St John, ranked 119th overall in our league table, is the notable outlier among the institutions with the best graduate employment rates for computer science. It even finishes marginally ahead of its Russell Group city neighbour, the University of York.

Places on the BSc in computer science degree at York St John (with a 92.6% high-skilled jobs employment rate) can be had for as little as BCC at A-level, or 104 UCAS points, whereas Kingston’s standard offer for its BSc in computer science for September 2027 admission is 112 to 128 UCAS points (BBC to ABB) – with the second worst high-skilled jobs employment rate for computer scientists in the country at around half the level of York St John.

Wolverhampton and Bedfordshire have identical entry requirements for their BSc computer science degrees (96 UCAS points or CCC at A-level) but 87.8% of Wolverhampton graduates get high-skilled jobs, compared to just 50% at Bedfordshire. Sheffield Hallam with an 87.3% success rate also offers places for between 96 and 112 UCAS points, equivalent to CCC to BBC at A-level.

Economics

More than three quarters (77.5%) of economics graduates land high-skilled jobs within 15 months of leaving university, but the success rate between the best (Cambridge, 97.6%) and worst (West London, 31.2%) universities is wide.

Seven universities achieve a high-skilled jobs employment rate above 90%, which is not as many as for computer science (23) and reflects the less specific job roles that the degree qualifies students for. Nevertheless, you would expect graduate employment levels to be strong for a mathematically based subject.

Four of the top five in the subject measured by job outcomes alone are Russell Group institutions – Cambridge, London School of Economics, Oxford and Warwick, with St Andrews completing the top five – all of them with high-skilled job rates of 93% or more.

At West London, the university ranked bottom among 82 universities for economic graduates’ employment, the proportion in top-ranked jobs is just one third of that – 31.2%.

Entry requirements for three of the bottom five – West London, Westminster (42.1% high-skilled jobs) and Aberdeen (49%) – are all 112 UCAS points, or BBC at A-level. However, the same grades could also get you a place at De Montfort University in Leicester, where the proportion of economics graduates in high-skilled jobs is 82.2%. This is better than ten Russell Group universities in this subject.

Kingston, which features among the universities with the worst high-skilled graduate employment rates for computer science, ranks among the better institutions for economics. Its 74.7% rate in return for entry requirements that typically range from 112 UCAS points up to 128 (BBC to ABB at A-level) is a good choice compared to universities with similar entry requirements at the foot of our economics jobs rankings.

Read our interactive guide HERE.