Tag: diversity

In 2023 to 2024, UKRI recorded 5,165 new funded doctoral studentship starts. 47% reported their gender as female, up from 40% a decade earlier; 10% declared a disability; and 2% were recorded as Black. That last figure sits inside a dataset where ethnicity was not disclosed for 26% of starts and unknown for a further 9% — a gap UKRI itself describes as leaving its understanding “partial”.

All figures on this page are from UKRI’s equalities monitoring for 2023 to 2024 unless stated otherwise. This is the most detailed public dataset on who holds a funded UK doctoral studentship, and it comes with unusually candid limitations that belong beside every number.

The key figures

What exactly is this dataset — and what is it not?

Three scope notes, all of them from UKRI’s own text, and all of them load-bearing.

It is not an award rate. UKRI states plainly that “UKRI does not publish data on application and award rates for studentship starts”, because the source data and funding mechanism differ from research grants. What is published is “the distribution of awards as reported by holders of our PhD training grants”. So these numbers describe who started a funded studentship, not who applied, and nothing here tells you any group’s chance of success.

There is no benchmark this year. UKRI’s earlier reports compared studentship figures against HESA student data; the 2023–24 report does not, because “the discrepancies in reporting windows mean that HESA data for 2023 to 2024 was not available when this report was written, so we cannot provide benchmarks in this report.” That is the single most important caveat on this page: without a benchmark you cannot say from these figures alone whether any group is over- or under-represented relative to the doctoral population.

It covers UKRI funding only. The 5,165 starts are UKRI-funded studentships, a minority of all doctoral registrations — the full population figures, with their own caveats, are in our page on how many PhD students there are in the UK. Self-funded, university-funded, charity-funded and internationally funded researchers are all outside this dataset.

Where the funded studentships actually are

Before any characteristic, one structural fact shapes everything else: funded doctoral study in the UK is heavily concentrated by discipline.

One council accounts for 43% of all new UKRI studentships. That matters for reading every figure that follows, because council-level differences in age, disability and ethnicity are partly disciplinary composition rather than anything about funding decisions — and the UKRI aggregate is, by construction, weighted heavily toward EPSRC.

Sex and gender

The share of studentship starts reporting their gender as female has risen from 40% in 2014–15 to 47% in 2023–24 — a decade of steady movement toward parity within the funded population.

Two cautions. UKRI collects this through a system offering male, female or “not disclosed”, and acknowledges directly that “these are not in alignment with data reporting categories for equality monitoring data”, noting it is expanding collection to sex and gender reassignment in its newer funding service. And the comparison people most want to make — against the 55% female share of all UK postgraduate researchers reported by HESA — is exactly the benchmark UKRI declined to publish this year, and involves different populations and reporting windows. The gap between 47% and 55% is worth noticing and not worth quoting as a finding.

Ethnicity, and the hole in the middle of it

The recorded distribution across UKRI overall is White 46%, Asian 12%, Mixed 4%, Black 2%, Other 1% — with not disclosed 26% and unknown 9%. UKRI’s own summary is that non-disclosure “has been consistently high since 2014 to 2015”, so “our understanding of ethnicity for studentships is partial”.

Take that seriously before quoting any of the group figures. More than a third of the records carry no usable ethnicity, which is nearly three times the size of the largest recorded minority group. Every percentage above is a share of all starts including the undisclosed, so the true composition of the disclosed-plus-undisclosed population could differ materially in either direction.

What can be said with confidence is what UKRI itself says: after the White group, and excluding non-disclosed and unknown, the highest proportion of starts at every council came from the Asian ethnic group. The Black share is low everywhere in the recorded data — 5% at ESRC, 3% at BBSRC and MRC, 2% at EPSRC and NERC, 1% at AHRC, and suppressed at STFC because the count was too small to report.

Adjacent to the studentship data, and about a different population, UKRI’s grant figures show a pattern worth knowing if you are planning an academic career: among principal investigator applicants, those from the White ethnic group had a significantly higher award rate (34%) than Asian (25%) and Black (13%) applicants. UKRI’s own framing is that such differences “reflect systemic patterns rather than biases within the decision-making process itself”. Those are established researchers rather than doctoral candidates, and the numbers must not be blended — but they describe the funding environment a doctoral graduate enters, alongside the destinations data in our page on UK PhD graduate career outcomes.

Disability

10% of UKRI-funded students declared a disability in 2023–24 — 500 studentships — and UKRI reports the proportion has been increasing since 2014–15. The council spread is wide: 15% at AHRC (80 studentships) down to 8% at both EPSRC and BBSRC (175 and 45 studentships respectively).

Read that as a declaration rate rather than a prevalence rate. It measures who told a funder, through a monitoring form, at the point of a studentship start — which is a very different thing from who is disabled. Disclosure is shaped by whether a condition was diagnosed, whether the person identifies with the term, and whether they expect disclosure to help or hurt. The rise since 2014–15 is at least partly a rise in willingness to disclose.

Age

At every council, the largest group was aged 29 or under — but the range is enormous, from 93% at STFC to 50% at AHRC. Half of arts and humanities studentship starts go to people aged 30 or over.

That single contrast explains a good deal that is otherwise mysterious about doctoral life. Arts and humanities cohorts contain far more people with careers, dependants and mortgages, for whom a stipend is a pay cut rather than a first salary — one reason the same disciplines show the highest rates of part-time study and part-time working afterwards. It is also worth holding beside the published stipend rates: the same figure is a reasonable starting income at 23 and an acute problem at 38.

How to cite these figures without overclaiming

Attribute to UKRI equalities monitoring, 2023 to 2024, and name the population precisely: UKRI-funded doctoral studentship starts, not “UK PhD students”. Never present these as award rates, because UKRI does not publish them and the report says so. Always carry the non-disclosure figure alongside any ethnicity percentage. Do not benchmark against HESA using this report, since UKRI withheld the comparison for stated reasons. Note that rates for groups of fewer than five individuals are not reported and suppressed cells are marked, so small-group figures are absent rather than zero. And prefer the council-level tables to the UKRI aggregate wherever your argument is disciplinary, since the aggregate is dominated by EPSRC’s 43% share.

What the data cannot tell you, and where to look instead

This dataset describes who starts. It says nothing about who finishes, who has a good experience, or who leaves. Completion and attrition by characteristic are not published as a routine UK series at all — treat any precise claim about them with suspicion unless it names a study. For experience, the sector’s own instrument is the postgraduate research survey, whose supervision and research-culture findings we cover in our page on PhD wellbeing and supervision satisfaction.

If you are choosing a route rather than analysing the sector, the more actionable question is which funding structures exist and what each year contains — set out in our comparison of integrated and traditional PhD routes, and in our guide to writing the research proposal for a UK studentship. Whichever route you are on, the work that gets you to the end is the same. Tesify keeps the thesis structured and moving — chapters, drafting and bibliography in one workspace, 100% written by you.

Frequently asked questions

How many UKRI studentships are awarded each year?

5,165 new funded studentship starts were reported in the 2023 to 2024 financial year. EPSRC accounted for 43% of them; the other six councils ranged from 13% down to 6%.

What proportion of UKRI-funded PhD students are women?

47% of studentship starts reported their gender as female in 2023–24, up from 40% in 2014–15. This covers UKRI-funded starts only, not the whole doctoral population.

How many Black PhD students get UKRI funding?

2% of studentship starts were recorded as Black at UKRI level, ranging from 5% at ESRC to suppressed counts at STFC. Read it beside the fact that ethnicity was not disclosed for 26% of starts and unknown for a further 9%.

Why is so much of the ethnicity data missing?

UKRI reports persistently high non-disclosure since 2014–15 and concludes that its understanding of ethnicity for studentships is partial. The data comes from monitoring returns made by training-grant holders, and disclosure is voluntary at several points in the chain.

What share of doctoral researchers have a disability?

10% of UKRI-funded students declared one in 2023–24, from 15% at AHRC to 8% at EPSRC and BBSRC. This is a declaration rate rather than a prevalence rate, and it has been rising for a decade.

Are UKRI studentships awarded fairly across groups?

This dataset cannot answer that. UKRI does not publish application or award rates for studentships, so the figures show the composition of those who started, not anyone’s chance of being funded.

Are these figures representative of all UK PhD students?

No. They cover UKRI-funded studentship starts, which are a minority of doctoral registrations, and are weighted heavily toward engineering and physical sciences by the shape of UKRI’s own funding.

How does this compare with the whole doctoral population?

UKRI deliberately did not benchmark against HESA in this report, because comparable HESA data was unavailable when it was written. Anyone drawing the comparison is doing something the funder declined to do, and should say so.

Why do arts and humanities cohorts look so different?

Age is the main driver: 50% of AHRC studentship starts were aged 30 or over, against 7% at STFC. Older cohorts change everything downstream — funding pressure, part-time study, caring responsibilities and career expectations.

Does UKRI publish data on completion by ethnicity or disability?

Not as part of this monitoring, which covers starts. There is no routine UK-wide series on doctoral completion by characteristic, so precise claims about attrition gaps need a named study behind them.

Where can I find the underlying data?

UKRI publishes the equalities monitoring report with an accompanying data dashboard covering financial years from 2014–15 onward, and offers downloadable data for individual figures. Cite that publication rather than any secondary summary, including this page.