News and insight

As the end of the detailed design phase approaches, Programme Director Rob Phillpotts discusses in-year data collection and the opportunity for innovation in higher education.

The Sunday Times front page article, “Universities take foreign students ahead of British” (6 August 2017), discussed changes in UK domiciled undergraduate student numbers between 2008/09 and 2015/16. The article has prompted significant commentary on social media – including discussion of the data that HESA holds on student numbers.

The Collection Governance project team visited Scotland to meet with the Institutional Group on Statistics and discuss the current consultation on a Code of Practice (CoP) for data collectors.

The upcoming Data Matters conference reflects the long-held spirit of collaboration in the continual search for improvement which separates the UK HE sector from most others. The conference is a further opportunity for us all to share practice and learn from one another, to establish new networks in the changing landscape, and to achieve our common goal of advancing UK higher education.  

Andy Youell discusses how the Collection Governance project is deepening our understanding of data collection across the HE sector, to provide options for greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Further results of the 2015/16 survey reveal that 74.8% of employed UK and EU domiciled leavers from full-time courses were in 'professional' jobs. 58.7% were employed on a permanent or open-ended contract and 24.3% on fixed-term contracts.

The first publication of graduate destinations data from alternative providers shows: 75% of first degree leavers from alternative providers (APs) were in work; 72% of foundation degree leavers were in further study; 11% of HND/HNC leavers were unemployed.

  Open data licence: CC-BY-4.0

Data governance is at the heart of effective data collection and dissemination - the collection govenance project will present and agree a sector wide model of best practice.

The UK Performance Indicators show the proportion of undergraduate leavers from each HE provider who were working or studying six months after graduation, based on the Destinations of Leavers from HE survey.

  Open data licence: CC-BY-4.0

Last year saw us launch an exciting new strategy to publish much of our data as open data. Hannah Cramer, one of our Open Data Champions, provides an update on recent progress.