Surge In UK Student Interest In Coding Degrees

Software development and coding have emerged as the top two career choices for A-Level students, who will be anxiously awaiting national results day later on this week.

FutureLearn, an online social learning platform, reports that the two disciplines have passed Law to take first place, with 23 per cent of students harbouring aspirations for a career in either coding or software development.

"Career aspirations relating to coding are in line with what we see on FutureLearn.com, where courses focusing on technology have performed very well with this age group; the University of Reading’s popular 'Begin Programming: Build your first mobile game' course is being run for a second time in October to meet this demand,” stated Kathryn Skelton, head of strategy and insight at FutureLearn.

In second place behind coding and software development came Medicine with 22 per cent; 16 per cent prefer law and marketing degrees and 15 per cent expressed a preference for a forensic science degree, according to this poll.

Money is becoming increasingly important for penny-pinching students and 50 per cent are worried about having enough to live off whilst at university. Finance also has a large bearing on the courses being chosen and earning potential is the most important consideration when choosing a degree with 52 per cent citing it as most important. This was ahead of interesting work [50 per cent] or work/life balance [45 per cent].

A-level students also don’t feel prepared for life in higher education, with 61 per cent admitting to not being ready for university style learning and 40 per cent of those polled were worried about getting good grades.

The survey asked 1,000 students between the age of 16 and 18 about aspirations for university and beyond with FutureLearn using it to inform how it puts together its free online courses to help students and teachers.