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Who's working in HE?

HE Staff Data Who's working in HE?

On this page: Academic teaching and research | Staff numbers by HE provider | Full-time equivalent | Governors

The tables and charts on this page provide a summary of academic and non-academic staff numbers including the number employed at each higher education provider. Some information is taken from our Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2022/23 statistical bulletin which contains further analysis.

All tables and charts include a link underneath allowing you to download the data you see on screen, including filters. Many tables also include a link to download the complete source data as a machine-readable csv file.

Academic teaching and research

Chart 4 - Academic staff by academic employment function

Academic years 2017/18 to 2022/23

 
 

 

Staff numbers by HE provider

Table 1 - HE staff by HE provider and activity standard occupational classification

Academic years 2014/15 to 2022/23

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Academic staff contracts are for planning, directing and undertaking academic teaching and research. This includes lecturers and researchers, but also Vice chancellors, and medical professionals who undertake research.

Non-academic staff contracts include managers, professionals in non-academic jobs, student welfare workers, secretaries, caretakers and cleaners. From 2019/20, it became optional for providers in England and Northern Ireland to return non-academic staff data (with the exception of any non-academic contracts held by vice-chancellors/heads of institutions or governors).

See the Academic employment marker definition for more detail.

Higher Education Providers send data to HESA about all their staff who are employed under a contract of employment at any time during the academic year (1 August to 31 July). To prevent over-counting of staff resource HESA only publishes data about staff employed on an active contract on a single reference date of 1 December.

Exceptions to the 1 December census date rule are staff on atypical contracts who are counted regardless of their start and finish dates. Atypical staff figures are always shown separately and should not be added to non-atypical figures.

Most counts of staff numbers are full-person equivalent. This means that a staff member with more than one contract or activity is divided between those activities in the data tables. For example someone who works 3 days a week as a professor and 1 day a week as a gardener will be counted as 0.75 professors and 0.25 gardeners.

See the definitions for Coverage and Staff full-person equivalent for more detail.

 

Table 8 - HE academic staff (excluding atypicals) by HE provider and highest qualification held

Academic years 2014/15 to 2022/23

 
 
 
 
 
 
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There are notable changes to the coverage of Staff data from 2019/20. Prior to 2019/20, the data covered all publicly funded HE providers in the UK (and the University of Buckingham). From 2019/20, the data covers providers registered with the Office for Students’ (OfS) in the approved (fee cap) category alongside all publicly funded HE providers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This represents a slightly higher number of providers falling within coverage this year.

Full-time equivalent

Full-time equivalent (FTE) indicates the proportion of a full-time year being undertaken over the course of the academic year 1 August to 31 July. This is different from the FPE tables above, which count staff employed on a snapshot date of 1 December. 

Table 6 - HE Staff FTE by HE provider and activity standard occupational classification

Academic years 2014/15 to 2022/23

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View more detailed tables on personal characteristics

Governors

The Governor data presents a count of members of the HE provider’s governing body, including staff and non-staff, over the year-long reporting period. Coverage is for providers in England, Scotland and Wales. The first year of data publication was 2018/19. 

Table 25 - Governor equality characteristics by country of HE provider

Academic years 2018/19 to 2022/23

 
 
open-data   Open data licence: CC-BY-4.0

HE Staff Data pages

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