Universities are in a difficult spot. Demand for higher education is high, with more and more young people seeing the value of a university education, which is obviously great news for the sector. On the other hand, we’re hearing from university leaders that there are fewer and fewer staff around to provide the quality experience that students deserve. Anecdotally, some VCs tell us certain roles, particularly technical ones, are very difficult to recruit for in certain regions.
So we decided to take a look at the data to further understand the issue. Is the industry really worse off than a few years ago, or is this pressure a symptom of evolving times, of the constant striving for growth and of the industry’s need to do more with less? We reviewed data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), looking at employment figures between 2014/15 and 2021/22.
We then used this research to examine how staff numbers – both academic and non-academic – have either increased or decreased within that time frame across specific universities. We then grouped the data to enable us to calculate an average student:staff ratio for a range of university mission groups from 2014/15 to 2021/22. A table of the full calculations is included at the bottom of this piece.
