HESA statistics for 2022–23 academic year

Last week (8 August) saw the initial release of this year's much-delayed HESA data covering student enrolments in the 2022/23 academic year. Overall the total number of international students was up 12.4% compared to the previous year (2021/22), while the number of new entrants was up 21.8% year-on-year.

Breaking down these figures by level of study there was much stronger growth in postgraduate students than undergraduates, and strong positive growth in non-EU markets compared to continued decline in the EU. Growth was particularly strong in Nigeria and several South Asian countries, with India overtaking China to become the UK’s top sending country in terms of both new students and total enrolments.

Despite being the newest available data on student enrolments in the UK, readers should bear in mind that the statistics are still quite old and do not reflect the most recent developments – in particular, they will not have been affected by either last year’s changes to student dependent visas, nor do they account for recent economic difficulties in Nigeria and elsewhere.

New vs returning students and level of study

As noted above, there has been a relatively strong decline in total EU student enrolments. Most of this decline is a lagging effect of Brexit – many of the continuing students were still recruited under the pre-Brexit rules which were more favourable in terms of student finance and visa rules; as this group work their way through their course the number of continuing students will appear to fall even if there is not a major drop in new recruitment.

However, the number of new EU entrants did still continue to decline at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with undergraduates being slightly more affected than postgraduates. In contrast, non-EU students grew at both UG and PG levels, with much stronger growth among postgraduates – reflecting very strong demand for master’s programmes among students from South Asia and West Africa in the 2022 entry cycle.

Trends in individual countries

In the EU, all of the top 10 sending countries saw a decrease in total student numbers – including Ireland, which wasn’t directly affected by post-Brexit changes to visa policy and student finance. As noted above, trends in total students in the EU partly just reflect the lagging effect of previous years’ recruitment trends, but if we restrict the data to new students we still saw declines in 8 of the top 10 EU markets (the Netherlands and Poland being the two exceptions). In contrast to 2021/22 there did not appear to be a big difference between trends in Eastern and Western Europe.

Outside the EU we saw very strong growth from certain markets in 2022/23 – a fact that is already widely known from visa data and other sources. Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal all saw annual growth of over 50% in terms of new students, with India not far behind this mark at 49% year-on-year growth.

In contrast, China saw much slower growth, with only a 2.8% increase in new students or +1.7% if continuing students are included. This led to India overtaking China to become the UK’s top source of international students in the 2022/23 academic year, both for new students and for total enrolments. Two other leading non-EU markets, the US and Hong Kong, actually saw a decline in new student enrolments in 2022/23.

The reason for this difference was likely related to strong demand for post-study work opportunities among students from South Asia and West Africa after the launch of the Graduate Route, which opened 2021 – whereas students from mainland China, Hong Kong and the US tend to be less affected by immigration opportunities.

More detailed data

The above analysis is based on HESA’s Statistical First Release. This release has relatively limited information on international students, and doesn’t contain country-level breakdowns by other aspects like subject area or institution. The British Council is in communication with HESA about receiving more detailed data, after which the student data tools on our website will be updated.

One other thing to note if comparing the above data to previous years’ data is that the figures above do not include visiting and exchange students. This group makes up a significant proportion of mobile students from some sending countries (especially EU countries and the US), which may cause differences between the figures above and previous British Council analysis of international student trends.

Source

Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2022/23, HESA, 2024 https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/08-08-2024/sb269-higher-education-student-statistics