Programme Explorer - HESA Sector Data

This programme explorer contains data compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency on student populations of HEIs across the UK. The data contains the standard JACS subject group and JACS principal subject lines provided through HESA, but also includes the individual course title used by the institution.

All sheets show the HESA Standard Registration Population, which excludes dormant students, postdoctoral students, programmes where the study is outside the UK, sabbatical and writing-up students. Incoming visiting and exchange students are included in the data.

The Programme Explorer view gives a breakdown of each institution's offering, including details of year of study and home/overseas; the Common Course Titles view gives a more interactive broad analysis where a specific course title(s) can be highlighted in the upper section, and the institutions which offer this course are shown in the lower section. These institutions can then also be highlighted, and the upper section will display the other courses offered by that institution (within the subject groups chosen in the filters on the right). 

All numbers are shown as full-person equivalents (FPE) and are sorted by total FPE across the row, highest to lowest.

The student headcounts incorporate the HESA rounding strategy:

(a) All numbers are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5

(b) Any number lower than 2.5 is rounded to 0

(c) Halves are always rounded upwards (e.g. 2.5 is rounded to 5)

(d) Percentages based on fewer than 22.5 individuals are suppressed

(e) Averages based on 7 or fewer individuals are suppressed

Further details about the rounding strategy can be found at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/about/regulation/data-protection/rounding-and-suppression-anonymise-statistics

The Mission Group and Institution filters can be used to select specific institutions; the Level of Study and Home/Overseas Fee Eligibility filters can be used to selected specific mixes of students - 'Eligible to pay home fees' is equivalent to Home/EU used in other reports, for undergraduate comparisons both 'First degree' and 'Other undergraduate' levels should be selected.

The Subject Group and Principal Subject filters can be used to choose either a group of subjects or a single subject from the JACS coding hierarchy. These filters can be used in conjunction with the Grouping filter to show different aggregations of data:

• Institution's course title: shows each institution and the title they market each course as. Since these titles are uncoded they are unlikely to be directly comparable across institutions. This view shows the portfolio of courses offered by an institution.
• Institution, Subject: shows each institution and the JACS principal subject. These are a higher level than course title and are broadly comparable. This view shows the distribution of each institution's student population within a subject group.
• Subject, Institution: as above but with principal subject listed first. This view shows the student population size and ranking of institutions within each subject.
• Subject: shows principal subject for all selected institutions. This view shows the size of a subject across the HE sector or a subset of it.
• Institution: shows size of student population by institution within the chosen principal subject(s). This view shows the student population size and ranking of institutions within the selected subjects.

If you have questions on using Tableau, this workbook, or the underlying data, please contact planning-office@york.ac.uk

Version: Q:\DISCOVER\Programmes and Modules\HESAProgrammeExplorer v2.9.1.twbx

• 12 March 2012 - initial release
• 30 May 2012 - updated to include 2010/11 data, added Common Course Titles dashboard
• 8 April 2013 - updated to include 2011/12 data
• 1 May 2014 - updated to include 2012/13 data
• 21 April 2015 - updated to include 2013/14 data. Moved workbook to BIU design standards template.
• 19 May 2015 - alteration to exclude students not in the HESA Standard Registration Population
• 06 May 2016 - updated to include 2014/15 data.
• 04 May 2017 - updated to include 2015/16 data. Added options to Programme Explorer tab to group data using parameterised columns. Added user option to group or disaggregate rows by academic year.
• 09 April 2018 - Updated to include 2016/17 data.
• 03 April 2019 - Updated to include 2017/18 data.
• 15 April 2019 - amended to use HESA rounding strategy for student headcount.