The Education Section on a CV: What to Include and Where to Put It

The education section is the part of a CV people spend the least time on and change the least often, which is why so many of them still list a secondary school qualification from fifteen years ago in full detail.

It is a small section with a simple job: establish that you have the qualifications the role requires, and then get out of the way. Most of the decisions are about what to remove.

Where it goes

This is the only real structural question, and it has a clean answer.

Above your experience if you are a student, a recent graduate, or you have less than about two years of work behind you. At that stage your degree is the strongest evidence you have, and burying it under a part time job weakens both.

Below your experience for everyone else. Once you have a few years of relevant work, that work is the case you are making and your degree is supporting evidence.

Above your experience regardless of stage in a small number of fields where the qualification is the licence to practise: medicine, law in some jurisdictions, academia, and roles with a hard regulatory requirement. If nobody can do the job without the credential, the credential goes first.

There is one more case worth naming. If you have just completed a degree or a substantial qualification as part of a career change, it belongs near the top even if you have ten years of unrelated experience, because it is the thing that explains why you are applying. That logic is part of writing a career change CV.

What to list

For each qualification, four elements and usually no more.

The qualification, written the way it is normally written: "BSc Economics", not "Bachelor of Science degree in the field of Economics".

The institution, and the city if the institution is not internationally recognisable.

The dates, in the same format as the rest of your CV. Years alone are fine here.

The grade or classification, if it helps you. This is the only conditional item and it is covered below.

That is a two line entry. A degree does not need a paragraph, and a list of every module you took is the most common way this section becomes bloated.

When to include your grade

Include it when it is good and recent. Leave it out when it is neither.

A strong classification is worth stating for the first five years or so of your career, particularly in fields where employers screen on it: finance, law, consulting, graduate schemes. After that, your work record has replaced it as evidence and nobody is checking.

If your result was disappointing, omit it. There is no obligation to volunteer it, and a qualification listed without a grade does not read as suspicious, because plenty of people omit it for reasons of age rather than embarrassment. If a specific employer requires a minimum classification, they will ask directly and you answer honestly then.

The one thing not to do is invent or round upward. Academic records are the most routinely verified thing on a CV, and a discrepancy discovered at offer stage ends the process.

What to remove

Secondary school qualifications, once you have a degree. They add nothing that the degree does not already imply. The exception is a country where they carry ongoing weight, or a specific requirement in the advert, in which case one line is enough.

Module lists. "Modules included: Microeconomics, Statistics, Econometrics" is filler on a graduate CV and inexplicable on an experienced one. The exception is a small number of genuinely relevant modules for a first job, where two or three named courses show specific preparation.

Your dissertation title, unless it is directly relevant to the role or you are applying in academia or research.

Institutions you attended without completing anything, unless you handle them as described below.

Grades from decades ago. A classification from 1998 sitting on a CV in 2026 makes the reader do arithmetic about your age, which is a distraction at best.

Anything expressed as a percentage of an unfamiliar national system, without translation. A number nobody can interpret is worse than no number.

Unfinished degrees and interrupted study

This comes up constantly and the instinct is usually to hide it, which is the wrong move.

If you studied for two years and left, you can present that honestly and without drama: name the subject, the institution, the dates, and the fact that it is incomplete. "Economics, University of Leeds, 2018 to 2020 (two years completed, did not finish)" is a fact stated plainly, and it takes up one line.

The reason to include it rather than omit it is that the years exist either way. Removing the entry leaves a gap in your timeline that invites a question you have not answered, which is the same dynamic covered in explaining employment gaps. Including it answers the question in advance.

If you are currently studying, say so with the expected completion date: "MSc Data Science, part time, expected 2027". Do not describe an in progress qualification in a way that implies it is finished. This is one of the few genuinely serious misrepresentations available on a CV, and it is checked.

Foreign qualifications

If your degree was earned in a different country from the one you are applying to, the reader may have no idea what it means. Two small additions fix this.

Give the local equivalent where one exists. "Licenciatura in Business Administration (equivalent to a UK bachelor's degree)" costs six words and removes the doubt entirely.

Translate the grading system if you include a grade. "1.7 (German scale, where 1.0 is highest)" is instantly readable. An untranslated number invites a wrong assumption, and the assumption is usually unfavourable, since readers tend to map an unfamiliar scale onto the one they know.

If a formal recognition statement exists in your destination country and you have obtained one, mentioning it in a short clause is worth the space, particularly in regulated professions.

Professional qualifications: education or their own section

A frequent question, and the answer depends on volume.

If you have one or two professional certifications, put them in the education section beneath your degree. If you have several, or they are more relevant to the job than your degree, give them a separate short section titled Certifications and put it above education.

The distinction that matters is relevance rather than formality. For an accountant, the professional qualification is the headline and the degree is background. For a developer, a cloud certification may be more current evidence than a computer science degree from twelve years ago.

Include the awarding body and the year, and be honest about status: "in progress" and "passed, awaiting certification" are both fine to write, and both are better than ambiguity.

Worked examples at three stages

The same person, three points in a career, showing how the section shrinks.

Final year student, education above experience:

Education

>

BSc Economics, University of Leeds, 2023 to 2026 Predicted 2:1. Relevant modules: Econometrics, Data Analysis, Behavioural Economics. Dissertation: pricing behaviour in UK supermarket own brands, using a dataset of 40,000 price points. Course representative for a cohort of 120 students, elected two years running.

Four lines, and every one of them is doing work. At this stage there is little else to show, so specifics about the degree are the evidence.

Three years into a career, education below experience:

Education

>

BSc Economics (2:1), University of Leeds, 2026

One line. The dissertation, the modules and the course representative role have all been absorbed by three years of actual work, and repeating them now would look like padding.

Twelve years in, with a professional qualification:

Qualifications

>

ACCA, qualified 2031

>

Education

>

BSc Economics, University of Leeds, 2026

The professional qualification has moved above the degree because it is the more relevant credential, and the classification has gone, because after twelve years nobody is screening on it.

Notice that nothing was hidden at any stage. Each version is a true and complete account of the qualifications, edited to the level of detail the reader needs.

The parsing angle

A brief practical note, because this section interacts with the software more than people expect.

Use the heading "Education". Parsers look for it, and creative alternatives leave your qualifications filed under nothing in particular. The same applies to keeping the entries in a simple list rather than a table or a two column arrangement, for the reasons set out in the formatting that actually breaks an ATS.

Write the qualification in the form an employer would search for. Someone filtering for graduates searches "BSc", "BA", "MSc", "MBA" or the spelled out equivalents, not "degree in". Spelling out the abbreviation once covers both, which is the same principle as choosing the right keywords.

What actually gets verified

Worth knowing, because it explains why this is the one section where accuracy matters more than presentation.

Education is the most commonly checked item on a CV. Many employers use a background screening service before an offer is finalised, and degree verification is the cheapest and most standard check available: the institution confirms the qualification, the dates and often the classification.

What that means practically is that a small exaggeration here carries a different kind of risk from a generous description of a job. A stretched bullet about your responsibilities is a matter of interpretation. A degree you did not complete, a classification one band higher than the record, or a date shifted to close a gap is a factual discrepancy, and discovering one at offer stage typically ends the process regardless of how well the interviews went.

The reassuring half of this is that honest awkwardness is fine. An unfinished degree stated plainly, a modest classification omitted, a qualification from an institution nobody has heard of: none of these are problems. Employers deal with all of them routinely. What they do not deal with is finding out that the document was wrong.

Awards, scholarships and the extras

A short note on the things that sometimes sit in or near this section.

Scholarships and academic prizes are worth listing while they are recent, particularly competitive ones, because they are external validation rather than self assessment. One line each, with the year. After five or six years of work they can go.

Student leadership and society roles belong in experience rather than education if they involved real responsibility, and can be dropped entirely once you have professional equivalents. Running a society with a budget and a committee is work, and it reads better described as work.

Study abroad is worth a clause on the relevant degree entry rather than a separate line, unless the language or the market is directly relevant to the role, in which case it earns more space.

Professional memberships are not education. If you belong to a professional body, that goes with your certifications or in a short memberships line, with the membership grade if it means something in your field.

What this section is actually for

Worth stating plainly, because it explains most of the advice above.

For a graduate, the education section is evidence. It is the main thing you have, and it deserves detail: the degree, the classification, a relevant project or two, any awards.

For everyone else, it is a checkbox. The reader is confirming that you have the qualification the role requires, and they spend perhaps two seconds on it. Detail that was appropriate at twenty two is clutter at thirty five, competing for attention with the achievements that actually make your case, as discussed in quantifying achievements.

The section should shrink as your career grows. If yours has not, that is the edit.

Frequently asked questions

Should I include my school qualifications?

Not once you have a degree. If you have no degree, list them, and give the results if they are strong. Otherwise the qualification name and dates are enough.

What if I never went to university?

List what you have: vocational qualifications, apprenticeships, professional certifications, relevant training. Then keep the section short and let your experience do the work. Plenty of roles do not require a degree, and a confident short education section reads better than an apologetic long one.

Do I need to include graduation dates?

They are conventional and their absence is noticeable. If you are concerned about age signalling, the usual approach is to list only your most recent qualifications rather than removing dates, since a dateless education section draws more attention than the dates would have.

How do I list a degree I am still studying for?

With the expected completion date and a clear status: "BA History, expected 2028". Never present it in a way that implies completion.

Should I list my grade point average or classification?

If it is good and you graduated recently, yes. If it is neither, leave it out. No employer treats its absence as an admission.

Where do online courses go?

In a certifications section if they are substantial and relevant, with the provider and the year. A long list of short courses reads as activity rather than capability, so pick the three that matter and drop the rest.

Check that your qualifications came through

Education is one of the sections parsers most often misfile, particularly when the layout puts dates in a separate column or the heading is unconventional. CvLaunch reads your CV and shows you the structured result, including whether your qualifications, institutions and dates were recognised as such. It takes a few seconds, it is free, and there is no sign up.