While a few marks here or there on final exam may be the only difference, employers use degree results to screen CVs, meaning a lifetime of earning implications.
The research also shows a huge gulf in salaries between the best and worst paying degree subjects. Civil engineering graduates can ultimately expect to earn an average of £46,940, while employers looking for hospitality & tourism degrees pay only £18,996 on average.
Economics, engineering and law degrees top the list of high earners, closely followed by maths and computer science, whereas art & design, sociology, anthropology and media studies languish towards the bottom.
For school leavers who are put off university education entirely by rising debts and expected average tuition fees of over £8,000 per year from 2012, all may not be not lost.
Offshore oil platform jobs topped Adzuna's analysis of the highest-paying jobs that don't require a degree with an average of £76,155, followed by nuclear energy workers at £42,945 and police sergeants at £39,033.
Adzuna analysed every job advertisement posted in the last month on over 100 different UK job boards, a total of over one million unique records, using the advanced search technology that powers its job search engine.
It is the first study to look at a complete index of actual employer demand for degree subjects and grades in the marketplace.
