Higher Education Statistics – 2024/2025
Core STEM degrees represent 18% of all degrees in the UK, with almost 200,000 being achieved in 2024/2025 across both undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications. Despite women making up more than half (57%) of all degrees in 2024/2025, they only represent 30.8% of STEM degree qualifications.
Women’s representation in core STEM subjects
Since 2020, the proportion of women completing Physical sciences degrees has continued to rise, now reaching near gender parity at 46.6%.
Mathematical sciences have slightly dropped this year, down to 37.1%. Whilst Computing’s previous upward trend has plateaued at 27.9%, Engineering and Technology, with the lowest proportion, sees slight growth up to 23.2%.
The latest HESA data shows a similar number of STEM degrees being achieved by women in 2024/25 (58,815 compared to 58,740 in 2023/24), showing steady uptake amongst the disciplines. However, only Computing (increase of 1,185) and Physical Sciences (increase of 180) continue to rise, with a small drop in all other subjects.
This is largely due to a reduction in the number of postgraduate qualifications this year. Mathematical sciences has fallen 13% (from 3,070 to 2,665), Engineering and technology dropped 9% (from 8,410 to 7,690) and Architecture, building and planning fell 4% (from 5,780 to 5,550).
In this year’s Higher Education data release, we have broken down the data into both undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications to look at emerging trends across both levels.
A consistent trend across the STEM subjects is the proportion of women taking postgraduate qualifications in a subject is higher than at an undergraduate level. This is especially noticeable in Engineering and technology, and Computing.
Computing
Since 2020, there has been a significant increase (172%) in the number of Computing qualifications achieved by women. This year sees an all-time high of 19,565 women. When looking specifically at undergraduate vs postgraduate qualifications, there is a much keener uptake in postgraduate qualifications, increasing from 3,550 in 2020 to 12,845 in 2025 (262% increase).
Mathematical sciences
Mathematical sciences uptake has fallen this year in the number of qualifications achieved (down to 5,880 from 6,395) and the proportion (down to 37.1% from 38.7%) achieved by women. Splitting undergraduate and postgraduate you can see that until this year, the number of postgraduate qualifications was rising. Undergraduate qualifications continue to steadily decline.
Physical sciences
Physical sciences had a 22% increase in the number of qualifications achieved by women from 2020 to 2025 (up to 8,930 from 7,320). The proportion of women taking these subjects has shown significant improvement at both undergraduate (up to 46.2% from 41.3% in 2020) and postgraduate (up to 47.3% from 41.1% in 2020) level during this period.
Engineering and technology
Engineering and technology qualifications have slightly dropped in 2025 (from 14,895 to 14,245). This is driven by a decline in the number of postgraduate qualifications achieved this year. A similar decline was seen across all students, and so the proportion of these qualifications achieved by women has actually increased to 19.4% (from 19.2%) for undergraduates and 27.9% (from 26.6%) for postgraduates.
Architecture, building and planning
Architecture, building and planning has been steadily increasing in the number of women achieving these degrees since 2020. However, similar to some of the other subjects, there is a dip in the number of postgraduate qualifications achieved this year.
Data source link: HESA
*Physical sciences are defined by the CAH groups provided, this includes physics, astronomy, chemistry, physical sciences (non-specific), forensic and archaeological science, sciences (non-specific) and natural sciences (non-specific)