International postgraduate taught enrolments fell 13% in 2024/25, following significant policy changes
Domestic postgraduate taught enrolments grew from the 21-24 segment, with a slight fall for 30+ – breaking the pattern of recent years
International postgraduate research enrolments grew, but at MRes rather than PhD level
The release of HESA's annual spring data release is an interesting time. For one thing, it typically happens in January when I, personally, do not feel like spring is in the air.
More importantly, it's when UK universities finally get a view of sector-wide enrolment data... albeit for the previous cycle but one. And, even more importantly than that, in these parts, it's when those of us working in and around postgrad finally get any kind of sector-wide data at all.
And it is, therefore, the time when I get to update my favourite line chart. Which I will do shortly, further down this post.
There's some excellent commentary and analysis out there already (kudos to Wonkhe for an equally excellent header choice). What I will try to offer here is a few talking points for postgraduate recruitment. Because that's what we talk about in these parts.
We now have data for the 2024/25 academic year. This means, when it comes to PGT (Masters-level) recruitment, we're talking about enrolments after the introduction of the ban on bringing student dependents on taught Masters in January 2024 as well as several fairly sizable increases to visa fees and to skilled worker thresholds and, of course, the sword of Damacles (or, at least, Braverman) hanging over the Graduate Route (a sword which vanished, only to return in the grip of Yvette Cooper).
It was a lot for international students considering the UK and you can clearly see the impact on Masters-level enrolments:
Looking at international (the purple line) we see a slight drop of c.5% in 2023/24 (as policies such as the dependent ban hit January entry) and then a further 13% drop in 2024/25. It's significant and it hits particularly hard in South Asia and West Africa (where Nigeria also saw the impact of UK policy compounded by a domestic currency crisis). But it should still be taken in context.
The 321,575 non-EU international PGT students enrolled by UK universities in 2024/25 are substantially fewer than the 387,135 enrolled in the 'peak' year of 2022/23 (driven by the post-pandemic surge and momentum building behind the Graduate Route). But they're still substantially greater than the 180,510 enrolled in 2019/20 (the last normal pre-pandemic year) and more than twice the 124,610 enrolments recorded for 2014/15 (when yours truly was first becoming curious about this whole PG market insight thing).
The UK still enrolls a lot of international Masters students. Even in 2024/25.
As for 2025/26: well, we'll know next year, but the 2025 calendar year landed 5% ahead of 2024 for study visa applications, most of which will be at Masters level.
There are other differences we need to bear in mind when using 2024/25 data to reflect on where we may be heading in 2025/26. 2024 was a period of falling search interest for the UK, following policy change, but this turned around later in the year after shifts in policy change and rhetoric for the UK and the USA (something I've charted on the main Keystone Education Group blog).
This was eventually reflected in a decline in enrolments for most of the 'big' audiences (India, China, Nigeria) and the impact of that was uneven across the sector – as Amy Borett has covered in typically astute analysis for the FT. But other parts of South Asia, particularly Pakistan and Nepal, still grew search interest and enrolments.
I can tell you that search interest for both of these countries continues to be high during 2025 (with recovery from India and China too) but we're now in a world where BCA changes will make it harder for universities to supply this demand (and the new International Education Strategy has little interest in shoring up on-shore).
Returning to the chart, we see that domestic UK Masters enrolments fell by a little under 1% last year, after dropping by 4% in 2023/24 and 7% in 2022/23.
So enrolment here is also below any recent year, but still higher than pre-pandemic (336,065 in 2024/25 vs 320,240 in 2019/20). This is important and interesting.
As I will gladly explain to anyone who'll listen – at the conference bar, in webinar Q&A or elsewhere – the pandemic did more for UK domestic postgraduate enrolment than the introduction of the UK postgraduate loan. And it still has.
It's true that we have less UK students enrolling on Masters-level degrees than we did when much of the population was navigating furlough and online study (and work) were a relative novelty. But, despite an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and a postgraduate student finance system that becomes less fit for purpose with every passing year, we still have more people choosing to do this than we did before the pandemic.
It's still true, if you ask me, that the wider transformations in work and study since the pandemic have 'catalysed' an interest in postgraduate education and training. It's also quite possible that the advent of AI has played a role too. I note that 2024 saw UK PGT enrolments up 5% in Computing, and 11% in Mathematics; though they were also up 14% in Agriculture, which is perhaps less easily ascribed to AI (large landscape modelling, perhaps? Sorry).
One thing has, finally, changed since the pandemic. And you can see it in a new version of my favourite chart:
Here I've plotted the actual trend for UK domestic PGT entrants in different age categories against the % change in each year. You can use the filters to include/exclude different segments (for example, to just look at the time series or the deltas).
The story this data tells is a familiar one, with a twist:
One of the reasons the pandemic did more for domestic UK PGT than the PG loan was that it spurred growth in all three major age groups. Whereas the loan had most impact on 21-24yo 'continuers', 2020/21 saw meaningful growth in new entrants amongst 30+ 'returners' for the first time (looking at entrants rather than total enrolments here is more helpful, given the popularity of domestic part-time study over more than a year). And this, of course, is the largest segment at PGT.
In 2021/22 it fell less than younger entrants. In 2022/23 it was flat whilst they fell again. In 2023/24 it actually grew slightly whilst they fell, yet again. And, in 2024/25 it fell a tiny amount whilst 21-24 actually grew slightly for the first time since 2020/21.
The longer term trend is still towards growth in 30+ and falls in 21-24: 30+ entrants were c.90k pre-pandemic and they're now consistently around 110k; 21-24 entrants were c.78k and their first year of growth in half a decade only takes them to 73k.
But it is still growth and it's worth asking whether it represents something interesting. There is some evidence, for example, that graduate recruitment has been down in recent years (the ISE, for example, saw an 8% fall in 2025) and a Masters is an obvious 'hedge' against that kind of uncertainty (PGT recruitment famously grew during the 2008 recession, despite a complete lack of student finance at the time).
The other question is whether we're now reaching a ceiling for the 30+ segment. After all, it may be reasonable to assume that an older student has more resources to fund a Masters, but those resources don't necessarily scale with cost.
For both reasons, what's been true for domestic PGT since the pandemic may finally be starting to shift.
There's another place where Masters recruitment might be increasing, but I'm not certain we see it in the postgraduate taught data.
I've been one of several folks raising a concerned eyebrow at what we might call the 'rising profile' of the humble Masters by Research (MRes) – particularly when driven by so-called consultants and advisors using social media to position this as a way to bring dependents to the UK.
This exists because of an inexplicable (to me, at least) loophole in the 2024 dependent ban that allows dependents for Masters degrees classified as research qualifications. So that's all MPhil and some MRes. Because, despite the name, an MRes can be either a taught or research qualification.
HESA group them accordingly. If the MRes is mainly taught, it goes into the postgraduate taught bucket, where we see the decline above. If it's mainly by research (and therefore eligible for dependent visas) it goes into 'Other postgraduate research'. And here's what that looks like for UK, EU and non-EU over the past few years:
The finger points fairly clearly at MRes for this.
Whether it's an opportunity or a concern is beyond my remit here, though I've thought a bit more about this over on Wonkhe. I will observe that this is around 3.5k extra international (probably) MRes students against a fall of nearly 50k at taught Masters level for the same period. So, no, it's not like 'everybody' is just doing an MRes 'instead'.
Our own Share of Search data suggests that demand for MRes may have peaked last year:
Just to be clear what this chart is showing you: this is the % of people who specifically search for an MRes relative to specifically searching for other things. It's based on a subset of our audiences because not all prospective students specify degree type (most just select subject or destination). But the fact that MRes went from being something less than 10% people bothered to specifically search for in 2023 to over half of all specific searches in 2025 is... telling us something.
I'd also be wary of over-interpreting this, but it looks to me like the upward curve in 2025 (likely driven in part by the good folks on YouTube and TikTok) has settled down. We'll probably see some of it in the 2025/26 recruitment (if dependent visa data at the end of last year is anything to go by) and we're still not back to the 'normal' level of MRes interest we saw last year... but it's not as high as it was.
With the somewhat niche exception of those MRes search trends, all of the data I've covered in this post is uncharacteristically out of date. This isn't us using our Share of Search data to ask how behaviour on FindAMasters and FindAPhD might predict the market. Nor is it us using our Pulse survey to understand how that 'market' feels right now.
It's enrolment data from over a year ago.
And yet it tells us useful things. Or I wouldn't have spent this long talking about it.
We know that the 'boom' in international PGT is over (and, whilst parts of 2025 may have seen some growth, 2026 hasn't started well for visa applications)
But we also know that UK international PGT remains a lot bigger than it was pre-pandemic
We know that domestic PGT is fairly stable, with the possibility of a relatively stagnant jobs market having a positive effect on Masters interest
And we know that MRes interest and enrolments have risen substantially with less 'balanced' advice than you'll find on our sites exposing a policy loophole in plain sight; the question is whether that's all there is to it and what happens next