Mathematics is profoundly useful, being one of the most powerful tools by which human beings can understand and manipulate the world around them. But what does this mean in career terms?
Our team conducted a global survey of some 7.5 million professionals who completed their degrees at one of the world’s top 100 universities. This scale of our study is unmatched – the professionals we surveyed work for some 100,000 different companies, in a huge variety of sectors, in locations right across the world. Such a large dataset provides a unique insight into the most popular career options for graduates in each subject available at graduate school. Click here to see the full results of the MastersAvenue’s Global Degree and Career Survey (GDCS) ©.
Given the importance of Maths as a STEM discipline, many countries encourage Maths graduates to enter teaching. This could explain why the most popular career destination amongst Maths master’s graduates – applying to 14.7% of maths graduates – was education. Equally, as an internationally significant academic subject widely taught and studied at universities, there are plenty of opportunities for Mathematics graduates seeking academic posts.
Business Development – the dark horse of our study – was a very popular career path for Maths graduates, with 13.7% of those with a master’s in Maths entering this field. This shouldn’t be too surprising – Maths provides a powerful toolset to quantitatively assess trends; such growth and changes in the market. The ability to appreciate these trends is very helpful for becoming a successful business development professional.
Given the importance of mathematical modelling in the design, testing, and construction of engineered objects, it is pretty clear why 11.7% of master’s graduates in Maths choose to enter the Engineering sector.
As with Engineering, the ability to intuitively understand and use numbers to express complex concepts, to quantitatively analyse a system, and to model future outcomes, are very important within the financial sector. As such, 10.7% of Maths graduates choose to enter this lucrative field.
The power of Maths to model and predict the behaviour of physical systems can be usefully applied to Research and Development, where formulae and equations are used to develop new materials, chemicals, and synthetic pathways for human use. 9.2% of Maths graduates choose to enter Research as their primary career as a result.
6.7% of those with a Mathematics background at graduate school in our survey had chosen to become entrepreneurs. Given the degree of numerical literacy required to manage the profits, costs, and expenditure of any start-up, the advantages of having a mathematical education before setting up your own business are obvious.
Problem solving is a crucial feature of both Maths degrees and computing alike. It is unsurprising that 6.5% of Maths graduates we surveyed became IT professionals after they finished their degree.
5.1% of Maths graduates made the move into Operations after they finished graduate school. Operations executives need to deal with a lot of quantitative information about the products and services they oversee
Maths provides you with an incredibly powerful toolset, that can be applied usefully to a wide range of professions. Why not look to see what master’s in Mathematics are available on our website?
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