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Equality in higher education: statistical report 2018

06 Sep 2018 | Advance HE Advance HE publishes its eleventh annual statistical report today. The report offers insights into the age, disability, ethnicity and gender of staff and students in higher education for the 2016/17 academic year.

Among the key findings this year:

HE students:

  • The degree attainment gap between BME undergraduate qualifiers and white undergraduate qualifiers decreased from 15.0 percentage points in 2015/16 to 13.6 percentage points in 2016/17.
Student attainment across ethnic groups.png
  • Overall, 12.0% of UK students disclosed as disabled in 2016/17, with one in five of disabled students reporting a mental health condition.

HE staff:

  • Since 2003/04, the proportion of HE staff disclosing as disabled has more than doubled from 2.2% in 2003/04 to 4.9% in 2016/17.
Staff who disclosed as disabled since 2003-04.png
  • Only one in four professors were women; of these female professors, 91.6% were white, with only 8.4% identifying as BME.

Gary Loke, Advance HE Director of Knowledge, Insights, Innovation and Delivery, said, “Over the past eleven years of producing these reports, we have seen small but consistent improvements in a number of equality areas, such as gradual reductions in the average gender and ethnicity pay gaps among academic staff, and the narrowing of the BME attainment gap. While this is encouraging, the persistence of these issues and those related to other protected characteristics such as disability, gender reassignment and sexual orientation remind us that there is still a great deal of room for improvement.”

The full report is available here.

The report uses data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) 2016/17 staff and student records.

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