Data day concerns (with our friends LEO, TEF and NSS)
We know that SUs are more effective when they use evidence and data.
Recording coming soon
Hosted by
David Kernohan
Deputy Editor, Wonkhe
Much of that can be gathered in house, but what about when you need national comparisons or benchmarks? In this webinar from 2024, we whizz through all the key sources of national data on universities and students – on everything from access and participation to parking spaces – and show you how to present data and stats to tell the story you're keen to underline.
In this session
What we cover
- Data definitions are critical – policy is essentially arguments about data definitions, so always question what "students", "courses" or "providers" actually mean in any dataset.
- Key data sources – HESA provides gold-standard data on students, staff, finances and estates; the Office for Students maintains regulatory dashboards including B3, access and participation, and TEF.
- The National Student Survey – an annual survey of final-year undergraduates with a 70–80% response rate, measuring satisfaction across 33 questions, available at subject level for campaigns and spotting issues.
- Graduate outcomes data – LEO links student records with tax data to show earnings one to ten years after graduation, though small sample sizes can mislead.
- Benchmarking matters – raw percentages can mislead without context; a 45% employment rate might be excellent for disadvantaged students in deprived areas versus 70% for privileged students.
- The small numbers problem – data is often rounded to the nearest 5, or suppressed entirely to protect privacy, which can hide important patterns for minority groups.
- Timing complexities – academic years, financial years and UCAS cycles all run on different timescales, making data matching challenging.
- Provider identification – universities change names and structures, so UK PRN codes are the most reliable way to track institutions across datasets.
- Working with data – use Excel and CSV downloads, filter carefully, document your steps, use VLOOKUP to join data, and always have someone else check your work.
- Wonkhe support – David Kernohan builds data dashboards and visualisations for new releases, usually within 24 hours of publication, making complex datasets accessible.
Go deeper
Things to read
- Finding your university in the data: Summer 2025 edition
- A quick guide to qualitative data
- Data for the terrified – where to find facts, figures and numbers about unis
- A beginner's guide to HESA data
- What on earth is "graduate outcomes" data and why should SUs care?
- What should SUs interrogate when it comes to student data?
- Plus TASO's Luke Arundel on designing good charts to communicate higher education data