Providers change size and shape all the time.
They change to reflect actual and projected student numbers, change based on government priorities and regulatory incentives, and changed based on financial pressures.
All of this has an impact on staff of all kinds, but in HESA data (because of a decision to exempt English providers from returning data on the large number of other people who help make universities work) it is easiest to see a change in academic staff numbers.
We’ve had two unusual years of data – reflecting a time when the future was even more uncertain than usual, and student numbers grew (or shrank) sharply for reasons outside of the control of providers. For this reason the annual growth (or shrinkage) in academic staff offers a glimpse into what institutional priorities may be.
