There’s a growing perception in the community that the fastest way to get rich is to become a plumber, or otherwise pursue a trade. But new figures show that while tradies do pretty well in the salary stakes, graduates do even better. Andrew Trounson at The Australian reports that a 10-year study by the Australian Council for Educational Research found that getting a degree increased salaries by 31%, while an apprenticeship saw them rise by 23%. Getting a university place may be harder than ever, but there appear to be definite fiscal rewards (as well as the intellectual ones; I wouldn’t have wanted to go to uni with no-one except people worried about how rich they were going to get). Photo by the University of New England