Higher Education - Student enrollments

Student enrollements in the North East

There are four universities in the North East LEP area, University of Durham, Newcastle University, University of Northumbria and the University of Sunderland. Between these four universities there were 102,060 students enrolled in the 2021/22 academic year. The University of Northumbria was the largest university in terms of student enrolments in the most recent year, almost a third of the enrolled students in the North East LEP area were students at Northumbria (32%). Newcastle was the next largest, followed by Durham and Sunderland. 

Around three quarters of students in the North East LEP area are students originally domiciled in the UK. Just over a third of the UK domiciled students studying in the North East LEP area were domiciled in one of the seven North East LEP local authorities before they entered university (36%), but there are differences between the universities in their intake. Only 38% of UK domiciled students at the University of Sunderland were from outside the North East LEP area in 21/22 compared to 77% at Durham University.

Around a quarter of students in the North East LEP area are international students. Most international students are originally from Asia, with the EU being the next largest area of origin for international students. There is more data available on international students available on a separate report on the evidence hub.

The number of student enrolments in the North East LEP area has increased since 2014/15 by 20%. The number of international students has increased more rapidly than the number of domestic students, with a 28% increase in international students over the same time period compared to an 18% increase in the number of domestic students.
 

Students by subject 

The single most popular subject amongst enrolments in North East LEP universities in 2021/22 was business and management. 20% of all students were enrolled in this subject. The next most popular subject groupings were subjects allied to medicine and social sciences, accounting for 11% and 9% of the total enrolments respectively.

Close to half of the students studying in the North East LEP area were studying subjects defined as science subjects by the Higher Education Statistics Authority (46%). Using a narrower definition of STEM subjects 11% of students in the North East LEP were studying a physical science, mathematics or engineering and technology. 

The number of students in each subject area enrolled in each of the North East universities can be found in the table below.