Within those categories, there are more than 100 sub-criteria, like degree of confinement in the work environment and income growth potential. (My colleague Jacquelyn Smith covered the last best and worst lists here.) The data come from the BLS, the Census Bureau, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and an array of private compensation surveys, trade association studies and state statistics.

FORBES: The Most Overrated Jobs 2012

To counter the glut of 2:1s, Mr Thomas recommends sub-dividing that class of degree even further, to recognise the "very good but not quite first-class" students.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | Degree grades 'in need of update'

Though they did not, themselves, perform the synthesis, Dr't Hooft and Dr Veltman tidied up its mathematics to such a degree that useful predictions about the properties of unknown sub-atomic particles became possible.

ECONOMIST: The 1999 Nobel prizes