HESA 2025: The New State of UK PGT?

The challenges facing UK PG recruitment (particularly) PGT are well-documented here – as are the opportunities and the signs of recovery. But they've been oddly absent from official HESA statistics. Until now.

The latest data release means we now have a rear-view mirror for 2023-24. This finally reveals the impact of the various visa changes made by the previous government, but that isn't all it reveals.

Let's briefly take a look at between the line charts and update what, if you ask me, is one of the most-important-least-talked-about trends for UK PG since the pandemic.

2022-23 marked the first year in which non-UK enrolments overtook domestic at PGT (Masters) level. This is still the case a year later:

International (non-EU) enrolments remain higher than those from home students; taken together with EU enrolments, they'd actually be slightly higher than the domestic 'pandemic peak' in 2020/21. But I suspect that wasn't the first thing you noticed.

The more striking (if expected) trend is the decline in enrolments for all three major audience groups.

• Domestic enrolments dropped 4% from 2022/23 to 2023/24 (although this is a slowdown compared to the 7% fall in the previous year)
• International (non-EU) enrolments dropped 5% having grown 28%(!) in the previous year
• EU also enrolments dropped 5% (also a slowdown on the 17% drop in the previous year)

The decline is similar in each case, although the trend and the underlying causes aren't.

For the EU we're seeing the lingering effects of Brexit (automatic access to domestic fees and student finance expired in January 2021) as well as the impact of visa changes. For international audiences it's very much about those visa changes – particularly the ban on dependents for taught Masters students. I'll come back to the domestic trend.

First though, here's what that international (non-EU) trend looks like across the three biggest audiences:

What's interesting here is the different trend for Indian and Nigeria – the audiences which grew rapidly following the introduction of the Graduate Route – compared to China. Chinese enrolments actually decline gently from 2021/22, with UK visa changes less important than changing perspectives and intentions amongst these audiences themselves.

Broadly speaking, these trends are what we'd expect based on our Keystone Share of Search data, where we've seen relative declines in UK search interest for India and Nigeria and a much more stable picture for China – something our monthly Pulse reports monitor and which our FAU team would be happy to explore with you.

More generally, it's worth remembering just how big these international audiences still are. The UK isn't likely to return to the growth we saw a couple of cycles ago, but we're still well above where we were pre-pandemic (and pre-Graduate-Route). As Jim Dickinson points out, this is a case of boom and bust – but still whopping.

Year-on-year declines in visa issuance in 2024 may mean that HESA data looks worse before it looks better. But we are seeing more positive trends in search interest for 2025/26.

I first made this point on Wonkhe back in 2021 and most recently returned to it when commenting on some excellent work by the University of Edinburgh's Ewan Fairweather a couple of months ago.

It's still true:

The pandemic led domestic PGT enrolments to increase across all age groups. Since then, Masters-level entrants from the 21-24 and 25-29 segments have steadily dropped. Those for the 30+ segment were holding steady. In 2023/24 they bucked the trend and increased.

Let's put this another way (and apologies if I start to sound a bit 'LinkedIn' here):

In 2023/24, UK Masters-level enrolments fell from India. And from Nigeria. And from China. And from 21-24 year-old domestic 'continuers'. And from 25-29 year-old domestic 'young professionals'.

But they grew for domestic 30+ 'returners'.

This is consistently the most robust audience in UK PGT and it's one universities probably need to optimise for more than they do.

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