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Where do HE students study?: Personal characteristics

HE Student Data Where do they study?

31 January 2023

On this page: Personal characteristics by provider

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Impact of COVID-19 on student data
There are known areas in which the pandemic has had some impact on the 2019/20 - 2021/22 Student data. Expand this box for more information.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation in March 2020, just over half way through the 2019/20 academic year. An insight brief has been published that analyses the impact of the pandemic on student data and trends across years of enrolments and qualifications across various characteristics. There are two known areas in which the pandemic has had some impact:

There is evidence to suggest that among a few providers, administrative hold-ups related to the pandemic resulted in significant numbers of qualifications awarded in 2019/20 not being reported. The impact of this under-reporting is believed to explain some of the 3% decrease in the number of qualifications achieved in 2019/20 compared with 2018/19, and the impact is most noticeable on the number of part-time qualifications awarded. Qualifications that were not reported in the 2019/20 academic year have carried over to 2020/21 and contributed to the 9% increase in the number of qualifications awarded in 2020/21.
In relation to classifications of first degrees and other awards, many providers issued public statements that a 'no detriment' approach would be adopted when it came to assessment in 2019/20. This typically ensured that students would be awarded a final grade no lower than the most recent provider assessment of their attainment.

The 2019/20 to 2021/22 data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exceptional guidance was issued to HE providers regarding a number of data fields within the collections to clarify HESA's expectations about how these fields should be treated in light of the pandemic.

Personal characteristics by provider

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Table 3 - HE student enrolments by HE provider and age group

Academic years 2014/15 to 2021/22

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Table 4 - HE student enrolments by HE provider and disability marker

Academic years 2014/15 to 2021/22

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Table 5 - UK domiciled HE student enrolments by HE provider and ethnicity marker

Academic years 2014/15 to 2021/22

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Low medium and high tariff

Table 27 - UK domiciled first year students by ethnicity and higher education provider tariff grouping

Academic years 2014/15 to 2021/22

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What is a low, medium and high tariff?

Higher education providers have been grouped into 3 roughly equal groups according to the average number of UCAS points achieved by entrants. The groups are referred to as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’ tariff providers. Providers in the ‘Other’ tariff group had no students in the tariffable population and include some specialist HE providers, The Open University and FE Colleges in Wales.