Methodology

Career-country comparison release policy

CampCareer separates exploration from a publishable decision comparison. All 20 launch destinations may appear in Maps when a geography or institution dataset is available. A destination is not ranked, and no financial result is shown, until the exact career-to-official-occupation mapping and all required source rows have passed review.

• Decision ready requires an exact occupation crosswalk plus current compensation, tax, housing, tuition, and work-pathway evidence.
• Discovery means useful map or profile data exists, but at least one decision input has not passed review.
• Review required means CampCareer has not published enough current evidence for the comparison.

We never fill a missing country with another country's average, treat a broad major score as an exact occupation result, or show an unsupported tax model as zero.

Financial definitions

Every money field retains its original currency and source date. Conversion, where shown, is a display convenience rather than a replacement for the local-currency source. The default tax scenario is a single filer with no dependants and full-year tax residency. Student housing defaults to shared housing; graduate housing defaults to a one-bedroom outside the city centre.

Work and immigration status

CampCareer does not publish an immigration success percentage. We use eligible, conditionally eligible, not currently eligible, or unknownonly when the relevant occupation list, post-study work period, salary threshold, licensing or language requirement, and policy date can be shown beside the result. This is planning information, not legal or immigration advice.

Evidence record and freshness

Published cells carry the publisher, original URL, applicable date, retrieval date, review status, and methodology/data version. Policy and visa sources are reviewed on change alerts; salary, tuition, and housing sources are rechecked on their stated source cadence. A stale or incomplete field removes the financial result until it is reviewed again.

Degree Risk score

The Degree Risk score answers one question in plain terms: if you study this major in this country as an international student, how likely is it to lead to a job — and at what cost?Each major gets an overall rating of low, medium, or high risk, built from five layers. None of the layers says "don't study X" — a high-risk rating means the path is expensive or narrow, and we try to show exactly where, and under which conditions it still works.

1 · Employment outcomes

What share of recent graduates in this field are in full-time work shortly after graduating, by country:

• United States — College Scorecard earnings/outcomes and the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.
• Canada — Statistics Canada graduate employment and Job Bank outlooks.
• United Kingdom — HESA Graduate Outcomes Survey.
• Australia — QILT Graduate Outcomes Survey (~4–6 months after graduation).
• Ireland — HEA Graduate Outcomes Survey (nine months after graduation).

These surveys measure slightly different things at slightly different timepoints — compare within a country first, across countries second.

2 · Visa pathway

A degree only converts into a career abroad if there is a legal route from graduation to skilled work. We check, per country, whether the major's typical occupations sit on a recognised list and how long the post-study work window runs:

• United States — STEM-OPT-eligible field (12-month OPT + 24-month STEM extension = 3 years) vs OPT-only (1 year), with USCIS STEM-OPT and the H-1B as the longer-term (lottery-gated) route.
• Canada — the Post-Graduation Work Permit (up to 3 years) plus whether the field is covered by an Express Entry category-based draw (STEM / healthcare).
• United Kingdom — the Graduate Route (2 years; shortening to 18 months from 2027) and Skilled Worker / Immigration Salary List eligibility.
• Australia — the Core Skills Occupation List and Temporary Graduate (subclass 485) visa.
• Ireland — the Critical Skills Occupations List and the Stamp 1G graduate permission.

An occupation-list match materially changes how realistic the employer-sponsorship and PR routes are.

3 · Market demand

A 0–100 score for how actively the local market is hiring in the field right now: vacancy trends, graduate-program intake, and government skills-shortage signals. No single official statistic captures this, so we synthesise it from several signals and carry it as an estimate by design — it is the most judgement-heavy layer and the one we update most often.

4 · AI exposure

How much of the entry-level work in this field overlaps with what current AI systems already do well. We band each major (lower / moderate / higher exposure) based on published occupational AI-exposure research — OECD employment-outlook analyses and Felten-style occupational exposure indices — applied to the occupations graduates of the major actually enter. Important nuance: high exposure does not mean the job disappears; it usually means the junior layer of the job changes first, which matters most for fresh graduates. Like market demand, this is an interpretation of published research rather than a single official figure, so it is carried as an estimate by design.

5 · ROI

What the degree costs an international student (full international tuition for the standard course length) against the median starting salary graduates actually earn, summarised as payback years. The mechanics are the same as the ROI score described below.

Limitations — read this part

• Official statistics rarely separate international students.QILT and HEA outcomes are dominated by domestic graduates, who don't face visa constraints. Our visa-pathway layer is the correction we apply for that — it is our judgement, not an official statistic.
• What "verified" means — and what it doesn't. Employment, visa pathway, and ROI are marked verified: each figure has been cross-checked against the government source named above for that country, and every major carries the date it was last checked. "Verified" means traced to a stated official source as of a stated date — not that the number predicts your individual outcome. Some employment figures map a major onto a broad field band (for example QILT and HEA report by study area), so the match to your specific course is approximate.
• Market demand and AI exposure are deliberately left as estimate. Neither has a single official statistic behind it, so we build them from several signals and published research and label them honestly. The estimatetag describes how the number was made — it is part of being straight with you, not a gap we simply haven't filled.
• Field-level data hides person-level variance.A major's employment rate is a cohort median, not your probability.
• The legacy Degree Risk model currently covers the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Ireland. It is an editorial study-field tool and is not used as an exact career-country ranking in the newer comparison release gate.

ROI score

The ROI score answers one question: how much of your total tuition do you earn back each year, after housing and living costs, weighted by your chance of actually graduating?

• Net salary = median graduate earnings − estimated annual rent − estimated living costs, computed for the city where the institution is located.
• Annual rent = city market median rent × 0.45 (shared / student accommodation factor) × 12 months. Market rent represents a full private unit; students and recent graduates typically share.
• Living costs = annual rent × 0.4 (utilities, food, transport approximation).
• Total tuition = annual tuition × standard degree length: US 4yr · CA 4yr · AU 3yr · UK 3yr · IE 4yr · NL 3yr. Where course-level duration data exists (some Irish courses), it takes precedence.

Payback years = total tuition ÷ net salary, rounded to whole years.

After-tax estimates

The legacy ROI Explorer uses simplified 2024 single-filer models only in countries where a country rule exists. It is not a current decision-ready tax comparison. It can include national income tax, selected regional approximations, and mandatory employee contributions. Credits, deductions, household circumstances, local taxes, and professional advice are not modelled. Where there is no maintained model, the product labels the tax and take-home result unavailable instead of showing a zero-tax estimate.

Medicine override

Stored earnings for medical degrees use inconsistent career timepoints across countries (residents vs consultants), which makes raw comparison misleading. When you search for medicine, we replace stored earnings with first-year attending/consultant salary estimates: US $280k (MGMA/AAMC), Ireland €120k (HSE Consultant Type B), UK £100k (NHS Consultant), Canada C$280k (CIHI), Australia A$300k (AMA) — all 2024 figures. ROI and payback are recomputed from these salaries. Note this represents the post-residency stage, typically 5–10 years after graduation.

Career stage adjustment

Source datasets measure earnings at different points: US College Scorecard ~6 years after entry, UK LEO and Irish CSO ~1 year, Canada ~2 years, Australia ~3 years after graduation. The career-stage toggle rescales earnings to a common target year using multipliers derived from longitudinal data (HMRC LEO, StatCan Job Bank, QILT GOS-L, CSO Revenue, College Scorecard). Rent and living costs are held fixed across stages, so net salary moves by the earnings delta.

Data sources

• United States — College Scorecard (U.S. Dept. of Education): earnings, tuition, graduation rates.
• Ireland — HEA Graduate Outcomes Survey, Qualifax course data, CSO earnings. Field-level earnings are national averages by field; college-specific earnings are not published in Ireland.
• United Kingdom — HESA / Discover Uni graduate outcomes.
• Australia — CRICOS registered course data, QILT graduate outcomes.
• Canada — provincial open datasets and StatCan earnings.
• Rent & living costs — city-level market rent medians, updated periodically.
• Exchange rates — frankfurter.app (ECB reference rates), fetched live on the compare page.

Known limitations

• Cross-country score comparison: ROI scores are computed in each country's local currency and tax system. A US score of 38 vs an Irish score of 12 reflects different price levels and salary structures, not just "better value" — compare patterns, not decimal points.
• Tuition figures are international-student list prices or net prices depending on source; scholarships are not modelled.
• Earnings medians hide field- and person-level variance; visa work restrictions are not priced in.
• Rent factors (0.45 share, 0.4 living-cost multiplier) are simplifying assumptions applied uniformly across countries.

Found an error or have better source data? contact@campcareer.com