Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many (1) universities, (2) university students, and (3) vice-chancellors or their equivalents, there were in (a) 1991, and (b) 2020.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes data on students and staff at higher education (HE) providers in the UK. Latest statistics refer to the academic year 2019/20.

Data on the number of student enrolments at HE providers in the academic year 2019/20 are available in Table 1 of HESA’s HE Student Data pages: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-1. This includes students registered at universities, university colleges and specialised HE providers but excludes those registered at further education (FE) colleges. 107 providers held full University status in England as of November 2021 and 1,836,205 students at undergraduate and postgraduate level were registered with them in the academic year 2019/20. Each had one head of provider (Vice-Chancellor or equivalent).

Equivalent statistics for the academic year 1991/92 were compiled by the Universities Central Council on Admissions. Volume 1 of the 1991/92 students and staff publication from the Universities’ Statistical Record [1] shows that there were 346,587 undergraduate and postgraduate students registered at 34 universities in the academic year 1991/92. This count excludes students registered at FE colleges and former polytechnics.

Data on the total renumeration of each head of provider in the academic year 2019/20 are available in Table 11 of HESA’s HE Finance Data pages: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/finances/table-11. In 2019/20, the total renumeration (before salary sacrifice) of the heads of 105[2] providers that held University Title in England as of November 2021 was £30,243,000. Data for the academic year 1991/92 is not available.

[1] The USR publication is not readily available online but is available to users registered with the UK Data Service: https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/.

[2] Excluding University of Buckingham and Regent’s University London, which are not available.