Sta/Medr/07/2026: Equality characteristics of students and staff at higher education providers: 2024/25

Future of this publication

Medr intends to review whether this publication could be incorporated into our Students in higher education and Staff at higher education institutions publications as there is considerable overlap. We plan to speak to users to understand whether this can be done without impacting the use of the statistics while making more efficient use of resources.

If you would like to provide your thoughts on this and how you use this publication please contact us at HEStats@medr.cymru by 29 May 2026.

Main points

Students

Students are counted per enrolment, so if a student is enrolled on multiple courses in an academic year then they will be counted multiple times. The data includes enrolments at all Welsh providers that submit data to the HESA student record. This includes providers that are funded directly for higher education provision by Medr and providers in Wales that return data to HESA about specifically designated courses.

• The proportion of enrolments by students with a disability steadily increased from 14% in 2018/19 to 22% in 2024/25.
• The proportion of enrolments by students from the UK with an ethnic minority background increased from 12% in 2018/19 to 17% in 2022/23.
• The majority of enrolments were by female students. 57% of enrolments have been by female students each year since 2022/23.

Staff

The data about staff relates to staff at the eight universities in Wales who submit data to the HESA staff record. The Open University in Wales is not included as the data collected about Open University staff covers the entire United Kingdom and not Wales specifically.

Staff numbers are calculated using the full-person equivalent for staff at 1 December of the reporting year, for example 1 December 2024 for 2024/25. Staff on atypical contracts are not included in this report as they are not comparable to those on other contract types.

• From 2018/19 to 2024/25, the proportion of staff who had a disability steadily increased.
  • For academic staff the proportion increased from 5% in 2018/19 to 8% in 2024/25.
  • For non-academic staff the proportion increased from 7% in 2018/19 to 11% in 2024/25.
• From 2018/19 to 2024/25, the proportion of staff with an ethnic minority background increased.
  • For academic staff the proportion increased from 12% in 2018/19 to 20% in 2024/25.
  • For non-academic staff the proportion increased from 5% in 2018/19 to 7% in 2024/25.
• The majority of academic staff has historically been male. In 2024/25 there were still slightly more male academic staff (5,560 members of staff) than female (5,495), but both accounted for 50%. In comparison, 53% of academic staff were male in 2018/19.
• The majority of non-academic staff were female. 63% of non-academic staff were female in 2024/25, which is similar to earlier years.

Further information can be found in the full report and in the accompanying Power BI dashboard.