Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many postgraduates enrolled at UK universities and colleges are specialising in soil science.

Information on enrolments at UK Higher Education Institutions are collected and published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The latest data for the 2014/15 academic year suggests there were about 40 full-person equivalent postgraduate students enrolled in soil science across three UK universities and colleges; these are the University of Aberdeen, University of Nottingham and the University of Reading. Of these, about 15 full-person equivalents were masters students studying at the University of Aberdeen.

Soil science has a Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) code of F770. This is a detailed level code and some universities may occasionally allocate students to more general codes.