Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many lecturers at UK universities teach courses on video games.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes statistics on staff in the higher education (HE) workforce. Cost centres are an accounting concept used as a proxy for academic departments. All HE providers arrange their academic schools, faculties, and departments differently. HESA cost centres are designed to be as comparable as possible between different providers.
Information on the number of academics by cost centre can be accessed at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-26. The table shows that in the 2020/21 academic year, there were 8,720 academic staff at UK providers allocated to cost centre 121, named ‘IT, systems sciences & computer software engineering’. Video game academics could be allocated in other cost centres, but the aforementioned 121 is the most likely.
This is the most granular breakdown available and does not specify video games or computer games. As such, lecturers who teach video games comprise some subset of that number. Additionally, not all academic staff are engaged in teaching, therefore the number includes researchers and other staff, in addition to lecturers.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students have graduated with a degree in video games in each year since 2010.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes statistics on enrolments and qualifications obtained at UK higher education institutions. Latest statistics refer to the 2020/21 academic year.
The tables below show the numbers of first-degree qualifiers in computer games subjects between the 2012/13 and 2020/21 academic years. Counts are on the basis of full-person equivalents and figures have been rounded to the nearest five.
Information on the number of qualifiers in these subjects has been available since the introduction of the third version of the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS3) in 2012/13. Figures cannot be provided for any year prior to that. Information for 2019/20 and 2020/21 is provided in a separate table, due to the introduction of a new subject classification system, the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS). Figures for 2019/20 and 2020/21 are not directly comparable with previous years.
Qualifiers in games subjects (JACS3) include games, computer games programming, computer game design, and computer games graphics. Qualifiers in games subjects (HECoS) include computer games, computer games design, computer games graphics, and computer games programming.
Academic years 2012/13 to 2018/19
Academic Year | Number of qualifiers in computer games subjects (JACS3) |
2012/13 | 595 |
2013/14 | 625 |
2014/15 | 690 |
2015/16 | 900 |
2016/17 | 1,290 |
2017/18 | 1,265 |
2018/19 | 1,380 |
Academic year 2019/20 to 2020/21
Academic Year | Number of qualifiers in computer games subjects (HECoS) |
2019/20 | 2,510 |
2020/21 | 2,460 |