Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK, 2019/20

How many staff are there in HE?

In 2019/20, 197 HE providers reported staff data to HESA. Of these providers, 166 were present in 2018/19 and 31 were new additions this year after being added to the OfS Register in the Approved (fee cap) category. More information on data coverage is given in the notes section.

On 1 December 2019:

• There were 223,525 academic staff (excluding atypical) employed in the HE sector, showing an increase of 3% from 217,065 on 1 December 2018. Of the 6,460 additional academic staff, 1,595 of these were from the 31 providers newly added to the dataset in 2019/20.
• There were 146,780 academic staff (excluding atypical) employed on full-time contracts. This is an increase of 2%, from 143,510 on 1 December 2018.

The contract marker filter on Figure 1 provides an option to view data on the number of staff on academic atypical contracts. Please note that staff on atypical contracts form a separate population which is not comparable to those on other contract types (see the statement on the use of HESA staff data for more information). This bulletin does not include information on non-academic atypical contracts. Since 2015/16, atypical staff on non-academic contracts have been excluded from the coverage of the Staff record.

In 2019/20, 66,165 staff were employed by HE providers on academic atypical contracts. Atypical contracts meet one or more of the following conditions:

• Are for less than four consecutive weeks - meaning that no statement of terms and conditions needs to be issued.
• Are for one-off/short-term tasks - for example answering phones during clearing, staging an exhibition, organising a conference. There is no mutual obligation between the work provider and working person beyond the given period of work or project. In some cases, individuals will be paid a fixed fee for the piece of work unrelated to hours/time spent.
• Involve work away from the supervision of the normal work provider - but not as part of teaching company schemes or for teaching and research supervision associated with the provision of distance learning education.
• Involve a high degree of flexibility often in a contract to work as-and-when required - for example conference catering, student ambassadors, student demonstrators.

The total full-time equivalent (FTE) value of atypical staff in 2019/20 was 5,190. Further detail on Staff FTE will be published in February 2021 in our Higher Education Staff Data, 2019/20 open dataset.

What are the employment conditions of HE staff?

Source of basic salary

• Among academic staff, 174,265 or 78% had a basic salary that was financed entirely by the HE provider in 2019/20. This was the same percentage in 2018/19.
• The remaining 22% had other sources of basic salary. Other sources can include being partly financed by the HE provider, financed by research councils, UK branches of multinational companies, the NHS and/or UK and overseas charities.

Academic employment function

• In 2019/20, 98,085 or 44% of academic staff were employed on contracts described as having a teaching and research function. The total for 2018/19 was 98,600 or 45%.
• A further 32% of academic staff were on teaching only contracts. This percentage has steadily increased year on year since 2015/16 when it was 26%.

Contract levels 

• Among academic staff, 22,810 or 10% were employed on a contract level described as a professor in 2019/20. It should be noted that this is likely to be an undercount of all professors because many will fall into more senior levels, i.e. Heads of Department.
• Of professors, 28% were female in 2019/20. This has increased by one percentage point year on year since 2013/14.
• Academic staff employed on other senior academic contracts comprised 39% females in 2019/20. This has gradually increased from 33% in 2013/14.

Terms of employment

• Among academic staff, 74,580, or 33% were employed on fixed-term contracts in 2019/20.
• Of full-time academic staff, 25% were employed on fixed-term contracts in 2019/20. In contrast, 49% of part-time academic staff were employed on fixed-term contracts.

Who's working in HE?

• Female staff accounted for 48% of full-time staff reported to HESA and 66% of part-time staff in 2019/20.
• Among academic staff there were more males than females (118,865 and 104,305 respectively). Figures 2 and 3 show that 42% of full-time academic staff were female.

Figure 4 - All staff (excluding atypical) by mode of employment, contract marker and sex

Academic year 2019/20

Academic marker            Mode of employment

 

Download chart data (csv) | Download source data (csv) | About SB259 Figure 4 | Notes

Notes

Who produced this Statistical Bulletin?

This bulletin has been produced by HESA in collaboration with statisticians from the Department for Education, the Office for Students, the Welsh Government, the Scottish Government and the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland. It has been released according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority.

What is the coverage of data in this release?

There are notable changes to the coverage of Staff data from 2019/20. Prior to 2019/20, the data covers all academic and non-academic staff from all publicly funded HE providers in the UK (and the University of Buckingham). From 2019/20 it became optional for providers in England and Northern Ireland to report data about staff on non-academic contracts (with the exception of any non-academic contracts held by vice-chancellors/heads of institutions or governors).

A further change in England from 2019/20 was the introduction of the Office for Students’ (OfS) Register and the two types of registration categories available to providers in England; Approved (fee cap) and Approved (further information relating to the OfS Register can be found in section III of the pdf document Securing student success: Regulatory framework for higher education in England). Those registered in the Approved (fee cap) category are covered within the 2019/20 data presented, 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. In 2019/20, 197 HE providers reported staff data to HESA. This increased from 166 in 2018/19.

Of the 197 HE providers reporting staff data to HESA in 2019/20, 131 opted into returning data about all of their non-academic staff. The remaining 66 opted out and therefore only returned non-academic staff data pertaining to vice-chancellors/heads of institutions or governors. Due to this, we advise caution in interpreting this data.

Has data for earlier years been revised?