News and insight

A new web based management information tool is set to reduce the burden on higher education institutions of extracting and manipulating data for planning and reporting purposes.

The number of initial teacher training (ITT) students continued to grow in 2003/04 with a total 36,365 first year UK domiciled students (34,145 in 2002/03).

About the Performance Indicators

Of the 257,025 full-time leavers who completed HESA’s Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey, 73.6 per cent (72.7 per cent in 2002/03) had found employment. The number of leavers who were undertaking further study was 61,475 or 23.9 per cent (24.2 per cent in 2002/03). Of these, 22,535 were working whilst studying; this figure is included within the above employment figure. 15,250 or 5.9 per cent (6.2 per cent in 2002/03) were assumed to be unemployed.

This Statistical First Release (SFR) has been produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), in collaboration with Department for Education and Skills (DfES) statisticians. It provides details of the destinations of leavers from higher education (HE) who obtained qualifications in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK), during the academic year 2003/04. The data presented draws on the 2003/04 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) record.

In 2003/04 there were 338,105 staff at publicly funded institutions in the UK HE sector. With the introduction of the new Staff Record HESA has, for the first time, been able to determine the occupation types of staff – both academic and non-academic. 150,230 staff, or 44.4 per cent, were recorded as academic professionals.

The higher education sector had a total income of £16.9 billion in the 2003/04 academic year. This compares to £15.7 billion in 2002/03. In contrast higher education institutions reported an expenditure of £16.6 billion in 2003/04 and £15.5 billion 2002/03. The surplus of income over expenditure increased from £218 million in 2002/03 to £241 million in 2003/04.

An increase in part-time first years of 4.2 per cent was recorded in 2003/04 to 406,550 from 390,095 in 2002/03. The statistics are released today by the Higher Education Statistics Agency from the 2003/04 Student Record. Overall, this rise contributed to a 2.6 per cent growth of the part-time student body of all years of study to 812,475 in 2003/04 from 791,625 in 2002/03. Part-time students consist 41.7 per cent of all higher education students.

The most popular subject group among first degree students in 2003/04 was business and administrative studies with 12.5 per cent of students choosing programmes of study within this group. Biological sciences and social studies were the second most popular subject groups each with 9.2 per cent.

From the 2003/04 academic year the Higher Education Statistics Agency has introduced a new record of staff data that combines and replaces the several staff data streams that were collected previously.