Published: 17:26 BST, 12 August 2026 | Updated: 20:39 BST, 12 August 2026
Getting a good job after university is vital to cover the ever-growing costs of a degree. But the chances of achieving that goal vary enormously according to where you study.
It pays – literally – to know the difference that can be made to your job prospects just by the university you attend. At Imperial College London, 96.5% of graduates are in high-skilled employment within 15 months of leaving. They are also earning £39,000 on average. Both performances are the best in the UK. The university, which also tops our overall ranking, specialises in science, technology, engineering and medicine – all areas where there is national demand for high-quality graduates.
At the other end of the scale, there are five universities where less than half of graduates are in high-skilled jobs, with those from Bath Spa and Buckinghamshire New having the least success in the market (just 47.6% at each are in graduate-level employment).
And the costs of going to university are only rising. This year’s entrants will be the first to pay more than £30,000 in tuition fees, while at the same time the number of graduates landing high-skilled jobs is falling.
When this guide was first published in 2023, 74.8% of graduates from the universities featured within it gained these plum jobs in proportion to their education and qualifications. Three years on, that number has fallen to 71.1%, leaving several thousand graduates in jobs they could just as easily have got without a degree – and without student loan debts that average close to £50,000.
The number of graduates getting jobs that are in proportion to their education and qualifications has dropped from 74.8% to 71.1% over the past three years
The decline has come as the country’s economy falters, with employers taking on fewer new staff and larger ones shrinking their graduate trainee programmes all while weighing up the impact of artificial intelligence.
This year’s The Graduate Market in 2026 report, by the respected High Fliers research organisation, struck an equally pessimistic note: ‘The latest assessment of employers’ recruitment plans shows that confidence remains low and recruitment targets at many organisations are continuing to be reviewed and reduced.’
But the picture is not all bleak. Data compiled for the Daily Mail, which you can find in our University Finder, identifies the institutions where graduates remain in demand, continue to earn good salaries and where recent students believe their careers to be on track.
Our guide is the only one to use three measures to assess how well students are prepared for the working world. Graduate employment indicators account for one quarter of universities’ overall rankings, while our University Finder can single out the performance and ranking of each university on the three indicators collectively or individually using our unique ‘create your own league table’ function.
The rankings identify several universities – and not just the biggest names – where high-skilled graduate employment is the norm. Cumbria (86.5%, 4th in the UK), Worcester (79.8%, 11th and our University of the Year for Graduate Jobs), Derby (77.6%, 17th), Robert Gordon, in Aberdeen (77.3%, 19th) and Teesside (77.1%, 21st).
These universities are getting bigger proportions of graduates into top jobs than some members of the Russell Group of research-led universities, which are among the hardest universities to get into. At Liverpool, the lowest ranked of the Russell Group for jobs, 73.8% of graduates are in high-skilled work.
Read the full graduate jobs ranking below or launch our interactive University Finder – and personalise the rankings to find the university best suited to you. Or, you can also search the best universities by subject.
Imperial is in its usual place at the top of our rankings once again – for the fourth successive year – after nearly doubling its lead over the university in second place. It is not just the top institution in the UK by our reckoning but indisputably one of the top in the world for studying science, technology, engineering, maths, medicine and business – what Imperial likes to call STEMMB. Almost half the undergraduate intake in September 2025, when the number of applications hit a record high, was recruited from abroad. The university combines this academic excellence with a social conscience that puts other highly selective institutions in the shade. Bursaries of £1,000 a year extend to students from homes with residual annual incomes of up to £70,000, rising to £5,500 according to need and background. Efforts to ensure those admitted from under-represented backgrounds stay the course and achieve as well as their more advantaged peers are exceptional. Students are highly engaged while here, with 11,000 undergraduates involved in at least one of the 400 societies run by the students' union, and highly in demand when they graduate, commanding the highest salaries and with the largest proportion in high-skilled jobs. The university is centred on a campus in South Kensington, opposite Hyde Park, with medical students based in three central London hospitals – St Mary's, Charing Cross and Hammersmith – with another campus at White City. Three new degrees (a relatively rare thing at Imperial) will admit their first students in September 2027 – an MSci in medical science and innovation, and a choice of a BEng or MEng in maths and computer science for AI. Evidence, should any be needed, that Imperial is not going to surrender its position at the cutting edge of human knowledge any time soon.
