Tuesday 13 December 2016 6:00 am

UK business students have sixth highest salary expectations in Europe, behind Switzerland in first place

British business students have the sixth highest salary expectations in Europe, and the 10th highest in the world, according to new research.

Students in the UK were looking forward to an average salary of around £29,300 in their first job after graduating university, according to data from branding research company Universum – £3,000 more than the country’s average wage.

There was also a stark difference in expectations between genders. Male British business students expected an average salary more than £3800 greater than women, who expected to earn around £28,700 in their first job.

Switzerland topping the world’s rankings. Swiss business students expect an average graduate salary of €72,056 (around £60,300).

This was well above every other country in the world. Danish business students came closest, with an expectation of €52,551 (around £44,000), followed by students in the US, at €47,764 (around £40,000).

The survey of 302,807 business students from 57 countries also reveals huge divides within Europe. Swiss salary expectations were over 11 times higher than those of Romania, who thought they would be paid only £5400 annually – although this is actually below the average annual wage of around £6480.

Vietnamese students come at the bottom of the survey worldwide, with average expectations of only around £4600.

The findings were reflected in the engineering sector which was also surveyed. British female engineers thought they would be paid £1,500 less than their male colleagues.

Daniel Eckert, Universum Research Project Manager, said, “Despite the increasing numbers of women studying engineering they are still greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts.

“Being the majority enables male engineering to better compare their own expectations to the salaries of their recently graduated peers,” he added.