In 2022/23, the Open University, which focuses on remote learning, had approximately 140,215 students enrolled on courses, the highest in the UK during that academic year. After the Open University, University College London had the highest number of students in the UK, at 51,810, while the University of Manchester had the second-highest, at 46,860. The UK's oldest university, The University of Oxford, had approximately 27,340 students studying there.

In 2022/23 there were estimated to be over **** million students enrolled in higher education courses in the United Kingdom, which was the highest number of enrolled students during this provided time period. Although the number of students in the UK fell from *** million in 2011/12 to **** by 2014/15, this trend reversed in subsequent years, reaching the peak in the most recent year. Largest UK universities At ******* students, the mainly remote, Open University had the largest number of students enrolled among UK-based higher education institutions in 2022/23. University College London had the second-highest number of students at ******, followed by the University of Manchester at ******. At the UK's two oldest and most prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, there were ******, and ****** students respectively. The university with the most students in Scotland was the University of Glasgow at *******students, with Wales' being Cardiff University at ****** students, and Northern Ireland's Ulster University having ****** students. Student Debt in the UK For students that graduated from English universities in 2024, the average student loan debt incurred over the course of their studies was over ****** British pounds. Although students graduated with less debt from universities in Wales, Northern Ireland, and especially Scotland, this too has been growing recently. In 2024, students from Scottish Universities graduated with an average of ****** pounds of debt, compared with ****** in Wales, and ****** in Northern Ireland. The overall outstanding student loan debt in the UK reached over *** billion pounds in 2023/24, with the vast majority of this debt from students who studied in England.

For the academic year of 2024/2025, the University of Oxford was ranked as the best university in the world, with an overall score of 98.5 according the Times Higher Education. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University followed behind. A high number of the leading universities in the world are located in the United States, with the ETH Zürich in Switzerland the highest ranked neither in the United Kingdom nor the U.S.

This statistic shows the application rate, by ethnic group, of 18-year-old pupils from English state schools to United Kingdom (UK) universities in 2013. Of pupils of Chinese origin, 56 percent applied to a university in 2013, the highest application rate of any ethnic group.

The University of Oxford was the top ranked university in the UK in 2025, and was given an overall score of 98.5 by Times Higher Education, while the University of Cambridge had the second highest score of 97.4. The third and fourth highest ranked Universities were all located in London.

This dataset contains the amount of money paid by UK higher education institutions to ten major publishers (Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Nature Publishing Group, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Institute of Physics Publishing) for academic journals from 2010-14. The data was obtained by sending FOI requests to each institution through the website whatdotheyknow.com. It now represents over £430m of expenditure. These are ten of the largest academic publishers but do not represent the total spend of these institutions on academic journals. Please see the F1000 data note (http://f1000research.com/articles/3-274/v3) for a full description of the data collection process. For a visualisation of the data go to http://shiny.retr0.me/journal_costs/, and for updated 2015/16 figures go to https://figshare.com/articles/Journal_subscription_expenditure_in_the_UK_2015-16/4542433/3

UPDATE 08/10/2014: Added figures for 13 more institutions. UPDATE 22/10/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to Elsevier journals. Also includes additional figures for other publishers for 16 institutions. UPDATE 24/10/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to Elsevier journals for 13 more institutions. UPDATE 27/10/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to Elsevier journals for 5 more institutions. UPDATE 29/10/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to Elsevier journals for 25 more institutions. UPDATE 5/11/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to Elsevier journals for 14 more institutions. UPDATE 25/11/2014: Added figures for Wiley, Springer, and OUP for 20 Russell Group institutions from Michelle Brook's FOI data (http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1250073) as well as further figures for around 20 other institutions. UPDATE 03/12/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to various publishers for 13 institutions. UPDATE 09/12/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to various publishers for 15 institutions. UPDATE 23/12/2014: Added figures for subscriptions to various publishers for 12 institutions. Note on the data 16/01/2015: It has been brought to my attention that the way I have added VAT to some figures may not be 100% accurate. I have added VAT to those figures for which it was not provided (a minority), but since VAT is only applied to electronic and not print publications in the UK, the figures I have added may not be completely accurate. Electronic subscriptions make up the majority of journal expenditure now but not all of it. Please bear this is mind when directly comparing different institutions' figures. I will see revisit the data at some point to see if I can rectify the problem. UPDATE 22/01/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to various publishers for 16 institutions. UPDATE 20/03/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to various publishers for 16 institutions. I have also removed the VAT (17.5% in 2010, 20% in 2011-14) which I had previously added to those figures which excluded VAT. This is to address the issue raised above - in the UK, VAT is only charged on electronic publications and not print. Since I don't know which proportion of the expenditure is on print and which is on electronic, I have decided not to add VAT. This may not make the figures more accurate but at least I can be sure that I am not inflating them. The total is now around £5m lower than before. UPDATE 05/06/2015: Data for three more publishers added (NPG, RSC, and IOP) for 70 institutions. Added figures for various other publishers for three institutions. UPDATES 10/06/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to NPG, RSC, and IOP for 17 institutions. Fixed two formatting errors as noted by D. Himmelstein in the comments. UPDATE 12/06/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to NPG, RSC, and IOP for 20 institutions. UPDATE 17/06/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to NPG, RSC, and IOP for 27 institutions. UPDATE 29/06/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to NPG, RSC, and IOP for 7 institutions. UPDATE 29/07/2015: Added figures for subscriptions to NPG, RSC, and IOP for 5 institutions.

In the 2022/23 academic year, 30 percent of undergraduates obtaining their degree were awarded a degree with first-class honors, the highest possible grade for UK graduates. Almost half of all students achieved an upper second or 2.1, with 20 percent obtaining a lower second or 2.2, and just four percent of graduates obtained a third, the lowest possible pass grade. The share of UK students graduating with a first-class degree has increased significantly in this time period, while the share of students obtaining a 2.2 has fallen the most in the same time period. GCSE and A-Level grades also on the rise Higher grades for the UK's main qualification for high school students, the general certificate of secondary education (GCSE), have also increased recently. In 1988 for example, approximately 8.4 percent of GCSE entries received the highest grade, compared with 21.8 percent in 2024. This is also the case to a lesser-extent for advanced level GCSE results (A-Levels), with the share of entries being awarded an A or A* increasing from 17.8 percent in 2000 to 27.8 percent in 2024. There is no consensus on if these improvements are due to increased ability, or to grade inflation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, grades in the UK were a lot higher than in other years. This was due to teacher and tutor assessments being giving a higher weighting than normal, with exams being postponed or cancelled completely. The UK's top universities Britain's oldest and most famous universities, Cambridge and Oxford, remained the two highest-ranked universities in the UK in 2025, with the London School of Economics finishing third. According to the ranking, the University of St Andrews was the top university outside the south of England, with Durham University being the highest-ranked university in the north of England. The largest university in terms of enrolled students was the mainly remote focused Open University, which had over 140,000 students in 2022/23. Among universities that mainly taught on-campus, University College London had the most students enrolled, at almost 52,000.

Out of the ten highest-ranked universities in the United Kingdom, The University of Edinburgh had the most residential buildings for the calendar year 2021/2022, with a total of 193 at that time. The University of Bristol and the University of Manchester constituted the remainder of the top three, with 106 and 86 buildings, respectively.

India has the most universities worldwide. According to data from July 2023, there were an estimated ***** universities in India. Indonesia had the second most universities, counting *****, followed by the United States with ***** universities.

This is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of Chinese international students in the UK, with a comparison group of UK home students. It is part of a wider study with other surveys in Germany and China. The study population are taught (undergraduate and postgraduate) Chinese students studying in UK universities. Areas covered in the questionnaires: Socio-demographic characteristics and course details; family background (parental education, occupation, household income, siblings); prior education (academic achievement and educational migration); motivations for study abroad and decision-making process; personality traits and values (e.g., risk-taking attitude); study experience in current course; health and wellbeing; future life course aspirations; cosmopolitan vs national orientations.

Young people moving away from home to seek 'bright futures' through higher education are a major force in the urbanization of China and the internationalization of global higher education. Chinese students constitute the largest single group of international students in the richer OECD countries of the world, making up 20 percent of the total student migration to these countries. Yet systematic research on a representative sample of these student migrants is lacking, and theoretical frameworks for migration more generally may not always apply to students moving for higher education. Bright Futures is a pioneering study that investigates key dimensions of this educational mobility through large-scale, representative survey research in China, the UK and Germany. We explore this phenomenon in two related aspects: the migration of students from the People's Republic of China to the UK (this data collection) and Germany for higher education, and internal migration for studies within China. This research design enables an unusual set of comparisons, between those who stay and those who migrate, both within China and beyond its borders. We also compare Chinese students in the UK and Germany with domestic students in the two countries. Through such comparisons we are able to address a number of theoretical questions such as selectivity in educational migrations, aspirations beyond returns, the impact of transnationalization of higher education on individual orientations and life-course expectations, and the link between migration and the wellbeing of the highly educated. Bright Futures is a collaborative project, involving researchers from University of Essex, University of Edinburgh, UNED, University of Bielefeld and Tsinghua University. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), German Research Foundation (Germany) and the National Natural Science Foundation (China).

Data on the top universities for Medical and Health in 2025, including disciplines such as Medicine and Dentistry, and Other Health Subjects.

Data on the top universities for Business and Economics in 2025, including disciplines such as Accounting and Finance, Business Management, and Economics.

Data on the top universities for Physical Sciences in 2025, including disciplines such as Chemistry, Geology, and Physics & Astronomy.

Full resource found at: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base

Sourcing: Pricing Data: Individual entries are linked to third party resources within the database; non-linked entries come from Freedom of Information requests (courtesy of Ted Bergstrom and Paul Courant). FTE Data: UK Higher Education Statistics Agency for UK FTE (HE student enrollment FTE + HE staff); DOE IPEDS for US FTE (“Full-time equivalent fall enrollment” + “Total FTE staff”); Universities Canada and COPPUL for Canadian FTE (student data only). Institutional Categories: Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

Data on the top universities for Law in 2025.

Data on the top universities for Computer Science in 2025.

Data on the top universities for Engineering in 2025, including disciplines such as Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Snapshot img

Alumni Management Software Market Size 2025-2029

The alumni management software market size is forecast to increase by USD 117.3 million at a CAGR of 4.9% between 2024 and 2029.

The market is witnessing significant growth due to the increasing demand for efficient alumni network programs. This trend is driven by the need for universities and educational institutions to maintain strong relationships with their alumni base. Additionally, the integration of alumni management software with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems is becoming increasingly popular, enabling institutions to manage alumni data and engagement more effectively. Furthermore, the availability of open-source alumni software is providing cost-effective solutions for institutions with limited budgets. These factors are expected to drive market growth In the coming years. The market analysis report provides a comprehensive study of these trends and other key factors shaping the growth of the market.
Analytics tools provide insights into alumni preferences and trends, enhancing overall engagement. With mobility and mobile accessibility, alumni can connect via cellphones and mobile apps, expanding reach and convenience. Overall, the market for alumni management software continues to grow, driven by the need for effective communication, strong alumni networks, and data-driven strategies.

What will be the Size of the Market During the Forecast Period?

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The market caters to educational institutions seeking to streamline alumni engagement and fundraising initiatives. These systems offer networking opportunities and foster a sense of community among alumni. Integration of technology expedites procedures, enabling reliable records management and real-time updates. Alumni management systems serve as essential tools for donor administration, donor relations management, donation tracking, analytics management, and event planning. Universities benefit from data management capabilities, ensuring accurate and accessible alumni information.

How is this Alumni Management Software Industry segmented and which is the largest segment?

The alumni management software industry research report provides comprehensive data (region-wise segment analysis), with forecasts and estimates in 'USD million' for the period 2025-2029, as well as historical data from 2019-2023 for the following segments.

Deployment

  Cloud-based
  On-premises


End-user

  Universities
  Schools and colleges
  Educational foundations


Geography

  North America

    Canada
    US


  Europe

    Germany
    UK
    France
    Italy


  APAC

    China
    India
    Japan


  South America

    Brazil


  Middle East and Africa

By Deployment Insights

The cloud-based segment is estimated to witness significant growth during the forecast period.

The market is experiencing significant growth due to the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions. Cloud deployment offers several advantages, including cost savings from reduced hardware and software requirements, easy accessibility from remote locations, and decreased upgrading and maintenance costs compared to traditional on-premises systems. Institutions and end-users worldwide recognize the benefits of on-demand deployment models, leading to increased demand for cloud-based alumni management systems. Key features of these systems include networking opportunities, fundraising initiatives, data management, donor administration, analytics management, and mobility. Cloud-based solutions enable stronger alumni networks through event management, updates, and personalization. Integration of technology expedites procedures and provides analytics tools for alumni involvement and preferences.

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The cloud-based segment was valued at USD 218.30 million in 2019 and showed a gradual increase during the forecast period.

Regional Analysis

North America is estimated to contribute 41% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period.

Technavio's analysts have elaborately explained the regional trends and drivers that shape the market during the forecast period.

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Alumni management software is a crucial solution for educational institutions to effectively engage, manage, and maintain strong relationships with their alumni networks. These systems offer various functionalities such as donor administration, fundraising, donor relations management, donation tracking, analytics management, and event management. The integration of technology expedites procedures, enabling personalized communication, mobility, and social media integration. A strong alumni network provides numerous benefits, including networking opportunities, feeling of community, and

In Autumn 2024, among the students enrolled in the highest ranked university in the world, Oxford in the United Kingdom, 51 percent were female. See here for an overview of the highest-ranked universities in the world.

In 2022/23 the overall annual expenditure of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom amounted to approximately 48.6 billion British pounds, an increase on the previous year.