Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK 2022/23
An increasing proportion of academic staff are of non-EU nationality and from ethnic minority backgrounds.
View Higher Education Staff Statistics: UK 2022/23
240,420 academic staff were employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2022, a rise of 3% on the previous year.
67% of academic staff were of UK nationality compared to 68% in 2021. The number of non-EU nationality academic staff rose by 11% to 40,195, accounting for 17% of the total. For the first time, this figure exceeded the number of EU nationality academic staff which stood at 37,585 – a fall of 1% from 2021 and accounting for 16% of the total.
The number of academic staff who declared their ethnicity as White fell by 1% in 2022 while the number of Black academic staff rose by 18%. The number of Black academic staff with the contract level of ‘Professor’ rose by 25% but represented only 1% of all professors.
The proportion of professors who were female increased to 31% in 2022 compared to 30% in 2021.
On 1 December 2022 70% of academic staff were on permanent or open-ended contracts and 30% on fixed-term contracts. In 2021 33% had been on fixed-term contracts. The proportion of academic staff on “Research only” contracts also fell from 22% to 21% while the proportion of “Teaching only” contracts rose from 35% to 36%.
Today marks HESA’s first release of data for the 2022/23 academic year. A further open data publication, Higher Education Staff Data, will be released on 30 January 2024. Student data for 2022/23 is scheduled for publication in April.
Notes
- Headline statistics in this press release exclude ‘atypical’ staff. Atypical contracts are generally non-permanent contracts for short, one-off, or as-and-when tasks. Atypical staff figures are counted differently and shown separately and should not be added to non-atypical figures. See the Terms of employment definition for more detail.
- Statistics in this press release relate to staff employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2022 in the academic year running from 1 August 2022 to 31 July 2023.
- Professors are defined as “Senior Academic appointments which may carry the title of Professor but which do not have departmental line management responsibilities”. Other senior contracts including leadership and management roles may also be held by people who hold the Professor title. See the Contract levels definition for more detail.
- Percentages exclude unknown values.
- See Definitions: Staff for definitions of terms used in the release and explanation of the coverage of statistics.
- See Upcoming data releases for a schedule of HESA Official Statistics releases.
- HESA is part of Jisc. Jisc is now the data controller of personal data previously controlled by HESA. Privacy information on the HESA website has been updated.
- Jisc cannot accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived from the data by third parties.
