Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students were enrolled on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in artificial intelligence, computer science and data science in each academic year since 2021-22; and what proportion were international.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK higher education (HE) sector.

Table 52 of HESA’s ‘Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2024/25’ presents the number of student enrolments at UK HE providers, disaggregated by subject of study, permanent address of the student, and an option to select the level of study and academic year in a drop-down menu. Further details are available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-52.

HESA collects data on subjects categorised according to the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS). HECoS does include artificial intelligence (CAH 11-01-05) and computer science (CAH 11-01-01) as distinct subjects. While data science does not have a specific classification assigned to it, information is alternatively collected for students studying data management (HECoS 100755) and statistics (HECoS 100406).