News and insight

We know that many of you are working on open collections and we have attempted to minimise disruption as much as possible. We have aimed to migrate existing content and functionality, while creating a more accessible and responsive site with a robust navigation structure to make content easier to find.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is pleased to present the annual official statistical overview of higher education in the United Kingdom (UK) for the year 2014/15. This is the latest edition in a series that was initiated in 1993. It is a National Statistics publication.

The publication aims to present a comprehensive set of statistical information about a range of aspects of the UK higher education sector.

Headline statistics: 2,266,075 HE students at HE providers, plus 189,635 HE students at FE colleges and 50,245 on designated courses at Alternative Providers; 56% of HE students are female; 45% of students studied science subjects. The most popular subject area was business & administrative studies which was studied by 14% of students.

76% of all survey respondents were in employment. Of these employed leavers 59% were on permanent or open-ended contracts while 25% were on fixed-term contracts. 4% of employed leavers were self-employed, 3% were on zero-hours contracts, 2% on internships, and 1% were starting up their own business.

As the UK higher education system goes through its biggest overhaul in 20 years, together with cost cutting targets becoming the norm, partnerships and collaborations are more important than ever before.

In the words of Mary Stuart, Vice Chancellor at the University of Lincoln: ‘Behind every data point in HE data is an individual graduate’. This was the central message behind all the discussions at Wonkhe and HESA’s collaborative event on the future of DLHE, held on 4 July.

The statistics are based on the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey which asked leavers from higher education in 2014/15 what they were doing six months after graduation.

Overall, 93.9% of UK domicile full-time first degree leavers were in employment and/or further study six months after graduating.

This SFR provides details of the destinations of UK and other European Union domiciled leavers from higher education (HE) who obtained qualifications in HEPs in the UK, during the academic year 2014/15. The data presented draws on the 2014/15 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey and presents time series analysis relating back to 2011/12 when the revised DLHE survey was introduced.

Tariff. A word that conjures up, for many, a nightmarish image of complicated scoring algorithms and esoteric qualifications. It’s not exactly great material for a blog post. HESA has, however, been involved in a great deal of tariff-related activity of late, and we felt it was time we shared some of that with you. But first, let’s back up a bit.

The 2014/15 academic year saw the first compulsory submission of individualised student data by 63 alternative providers of higher education.

These providers do not receive direct public funding, but have had undergraduate courses designated by the government to enable their students to access public funding.