Who's working in HE?
On this page: Time series of staff numbers | 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, 2018/19 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.
Time series of staff numbers
Chart 1 - Academic and non-academic staff in UK Higher Education
Academic years 2004/05 to 2018/19
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.
See the Academic employment marker definition for more detail.
Figure 1 - Staff at HE providers by mode of employment and academic contract marker
Academic years 2014/15 to 2018/19
Academic teaching and research
Chart 4 - Academic staff by academic employment function
Academic years 2017/18 to 2018/19
Staff numbers by HE provider
Table 1 - HE staff by HE provider and activity standard occupational classification
Academic years 2014/15 to 2018/19
Show:
Reset filters | Reset sort | Download table (csv) | Download source data (csv) | About DT025 Table 1
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, highest qualification held, mode of employment and academic year
Academic years 2014/15 to 2018/19
Reset filters | Reset sort | Download table (csv) | Download source data (csv) | About DT025 Table 8
HESA collects data from universities, higher education colleges and other specialist providers of higher education. Collectively, we refer to these organisations as higher education (HE) providers. Most tables of HESA data count students at publicly funded higher education institutions plus the University of Buckingham.
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 2018/19
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Reset filters | Reset sort | Download table (csv) | Download source data (csv) | About DT025 Table 6
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 is 2018/19.
Table 25 - Governor equality characteristics by country of HE provider
Academic year 2018/19


HE Staff Data pages
- Homepage
- Who's working in HE?
- What areas do they work in?
- What are their employment conditions?
- What are their salaries?
- Where do they work, come from and go to?
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