Talk:List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment

Numbers of students

Uhm, according to this page, the University of Plymouth has 27,500 students, yet the University of Plymouth article states that it has "over 30,000" students. Where do people get their information from? Janipewter — Preceding undated comment added 12:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Data used

Only postgraduate, full-time undergraduate and HND students on UCAS-recognised courses are counted.

And yet the top institution is the Open University which has very few full time undergraduates and I'd be astounded if the PGs are making up the difference!

The Higher Education Statistics Agency has freely available online data and also covers institutions like Birkbeck, University of London which have very few full time UGs - the most recent data is at http://www.hesa.ac.uk/holisdocs/pubinfo/student/institution0405.htm. Would this be a better source to use? Timrollpickering 14:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The UCAS data is not the most significant, I think. There's now an 0506 version of the HESA statistics, we should use that. ThomasL 08:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I have made the change. This way the statistics for all of the Universities are calculated in the same way, including full-time, part-time, undergraduate and postgraduate students. ThomasL (talk) 18:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

University of Wales update

19/10/07 - Aberystwyth, Bangor and Swansea are no longer part of the University of Wales — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.194.94 (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Further Education

Should we include further education students in this count? Most of the individual University pages seem to do this in their list of student numbers, and this is the real number of students for each university, but it boosts several institutions much higher up the table than they would be if only Higher Education students were counted. At present I'm counting further education, undergraduate, and postgraduate figures but I'm open to suggestions. ThomasL (talk) 23:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd say yes. A university is the entire institution, not just the courses delivering HE, and the FE students are a part of the institution.

What might be an idea long term, if anyone's adept with the code, is to provide a table which could show the further education, undergraduate and postgraduate student numbers separately along with the summed total. But such tables are complex to upload. Timrollpickering (talk) 02:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Not all are universities

Technically, not all of the institutions listed here are universities, so the title is somewhat misleading. Would it be better to use higher education institutions? Cordless Larry (talk) 13:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly true, but people looking for this information are likely to search for 'Universities'. Would 'List of UK Universities and Colleges by Size' be better (fitting in with the various lists of Universities and Colleges by nation at List of universities and colleges by country, which lists only Higher Education colleges). The only problem then would be people misjudging on the basis of the title and adding Further Education colleges, but 'List of UK Universities and Higher Education Colleges' is a bit long. Any other options? ThomasL (talk) 13:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the problem is that by college, I think most British people understand further education college (whereas in other parts of the world it has different connotations). How about List of UK higher education institutions, with a redirect from List of UK universities? Cordless Larry (talk) 19:18, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I still worry that people who want this page will search for 'Universities' (rather than 'Higher Education') and not find the page. Whatever we choose, I think it should still mention 'Universities' somewhere within the title. ThomasL (talk) 22:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

List of universities in the United Kingdom includes other HEIs, but under different headings. This could be another option. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:05, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether splitting them up is a good idea. The old list seperated out University of London colleges, for example, which disguised the fact that the University of London colleges themselves are comparatively medium to small sized universities. The fact that Royal Holloway is smaller than Writtle College and the University College of the Creative Arts, and similar in size to Bath Spa University is just the sort of thing people might want to find by looking at this table. I think you're right to edit the introduction (and I'll go in and edit the table header) to show the range covered. ThomasL (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Turnover

How about a list of uk universities by annual turnover. That would be really interesting. I think this info is available on their website in their annual reports. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.154.173.81 (talk) 08:24, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Update

I've marked this article as needing a cleanup, as well as marking it for citing sources. Moreover, this article needs to be fully updated with 2008/2009 yearly figures for all universities. Thanks in advance to anyone who decides to take on this task. (AdamD123 (talk) 23:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC))

The figures provided on this page must be the same as in the 2007/08 source provided. Presumably it was correct when it was listed, and now figures have been changed based on either older or newer statistics. The reference on the Leeds Met page, for instance, is older than the 2007/07 source used on this, yet that data has been used to change this page. So I'm returning that.

EVERYBODY: Please use the data in the 2007/08 HESA source provided (in which case this page should already be correct), or provide a separate reference per line if it's data for 2009/10. Though it'd be best just to wait until a full new table comes out. --Tomsega (talk) 17:16, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Statistics

The use of mean and standard deviation is a bad choice of statistics here. The distribution is heavily skewed by the Open University which is far bigger than the next largest institution. I suggest median and inter-quartile range as better stats for such a skewed distribution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.183.212 (talk) 13:21, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

2012 Update

This needs updating - it's 3 years out of date. I might do it if/when I get time. MikeJamesShaw (talk) 12:48, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

format

As has been said v. out of date, also format means if one person wants to update with more recent info, they cannot as it entails changing all the ranks, is there an easier way to do that ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xyphoid (talk • contribs) 18:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

List outdated

This list is outdated since it uses data published by HESA for 2011/12. I would recommend waiting for the release of 2013/14 data, which is due February 2015. Is there an easier way to update the list than actually checking and updating each line manually? Also there may be newer student numbers on specific University pages available, because Universities tend to publish their student numbers more quickly then HESA.

JonaZ (talk) 00:14, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Source: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/content/view/1973/239/

@JonaZ:, I have updated to 2013/2014 data. And yes, if you organise the spreadsheet to the same way the table looks on Wikipedia (i.e. add rankings), simply copy and paste to excel2wiki.net. You can create footnotes in a seperate column on Excel then use the & function to combine the number of students and footnote into one cell. You can also set up columns either side of the name of institution column containing the brackets for wikilinks and again use the & function to combine it into one cell. This is by far the most efficient way to update data tables on Wikipedia. Hope that helps and feel free to ask me questions. In regards to university pages, I'd prefer to wait until the HESA publish data, since some universities will have different years and that makes the data far less comparable. Jolly Ω Janner 21:17, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

University of Birmingham seems to be missing

UoB's own wikipage says it is ranked 4th largest. And there is no entry against rank 4. B3cccy (talk) 20:10, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Good spot B3cccy. It looks like the page was vandalised by an anonymous user in June, who deleted Birmingham. I've reinstated it. Robminchin (talk) 02:09, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Defunct institutions and UoL

University of Wales and Heythrop College are now defunct institutions and should be removed from he list. University of London (Institutes and activities) is not clear, what does it indicate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GS-216.1993 (talk • contribs) 08:56, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Both Wales and Heythrop are still shown as having students enroled in the latest HESA data, which is the source for this page. This is because the data lags behind by a year or two, so in the year to which the take refers they were not defunct. University of London (institutes and activities) refers to the central institutes and activities of the University of London, as distinct from the colleges. Robminchin (talk) 20:38, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Numbers and data missing for University of London

Some administrators and editors are deliberately deleting and missing out numbers of collegiate federal University of London. Let me put this in perspective, UOL is 17 member institutions (former constituent colleges) [that gave UOL degrees from 1836 to 2008] and three central academic bodies. University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, six permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments and University of Cambridge is made up of 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties and other institutions organised into six schools.

How is it Oxford and Cambrige have numbers put up and UOL missing? Even old data (upton 1 or 2 yrs old is fine) as long as the article has source and approved external link to verify the information. The negative bias against UOL is pathetic.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:201:4005:90c2:f913:1d0f:ac6f:5c6f (talk) 15:22, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Oxford and Cambridge (and Durham, York, Lancaster, Kent, UAL, UHI, Roehampton and any other collegiate universities) report their numbers to HESA as single institutions, while the University of London member institutions report as separate institutions and the University of London only returns numbers for the central academic bodies. This is not a choice made by Wikipedia editors but by HESA, UoL and its member institutions. Robminchin (talk) 15:18, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

2023/24 census

Can we have a section called Universities and other higher education providers by size (2023/24) ? SferaEbbasta87 (talk) 09:59, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

What is needed is for the numbers at Template:HESA student population and the related HESA templates to be updated to the latest year. This hasn't happened for a couple of years as HESA stopped providing them with the INSTID that is used in the template, requiring tedious manual matching. The latest year currently available is 2021/22, published in January 2023; the statistics for 2022/23 are apparently expected in August 2024, statistics for 2023/24 will presumably be published sometime in 2025. Robminchin (talk) 15:11, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Why is University of Oxford not on here?

University of Oxford is missing; I'm not sure if others are as well. Transient Being (talk) 08:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not missing - it's 28th biggest in the 2019/20 table and 29th in the 2021/22 table. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:33, 1 September 2024 (UTC)