The UK had 121,175 postgraduate research (PGR) students in 2024/25, of whom 110,455 were registered on research doctorates — the PhD and its equivalents — according to HESA’s Higher Education Student Statistics (SB273, released 27 January 2026). 55 per cent of postgraduate researchers are female.
Those are the citable headline numbers for the UK’s doctoral population, and this page keeps them attached to the caveats that make them safe to quote. HESA — the higher education statistics agency, now part of Jisc — publishes the underlying bulletin annually; every figure below is from SB273 unless stated otherwise.
The key figures
| Measure | Value | Source and year |
|---|---|---|
| Total postgraduate research students, 2024/25 | 121,175 | HESA SB273 (Jan 2026) |
| — of whom on research doctorates | 110,455 | HESA SB273 |
| — other postgraduate research (research master’s, MPhil and similar) | 10,635 | HESA SB273 |
| Female share of PGR students | 55% | HESA SB273 |
| PGR total, 2020/21 | 114,405 | HESA SB273 series |
| PGR total, 2021/22 | 113,310 | HESA SB273 series |
| PGR total, 2022/23 | 123,660 | HESA SB273 series |
| PGR total, 2023/24 | 119,015 | HESA SB273 series |
| PGR total, 2024/25 | 121,175 | HESA SB273 series |
What counts as a “PhD student” in these numbers?
HESA’s category is postgraduate research — students whose programme is primarily research-based. Inside it, research doctorates (110,455 in 2024/25) cover the PhD/DPhil and doctorates of equivalent standing, while the remainder (10,635) covers research master’s degrees, the standalone MPhil and similar. Two boundary cases catch quoters out. Professional doctorates vary in classification depending on their research component, so “PhD students” and “doctoral candidates” are not perfectly interchangeable with the 110,455. And candidates registered MPhil pending upgrade are inside PGR throughout — the MPhil-to-PhD upgrade moves a student between rows, not into the population.
What does the five-year shape tell you?
The series is not a smooth line: roughly flat through the pandemic years, a spike to 123,660 in 2022/23 as delayed starts landed, a drop to 119,015, then a partial recovery to 121,175. Two implications for anyone citing it. First, pick your comparison year deliberately — “PGR numbers are falling” and “PGR numbers are rising” are both supportable by cherry-picking within this window, which is exactly why you should quote the series rather than a pair of points. Second, the volatility is concentrated in entry cohorts, which respond to funding rounds and international conditions faster than the stock of continuing students; the size of the funded pipeline — mapped in our stipends and studentship funding roundup — is the mechanism behind much of it.
Reading enrolment data critically
Enrolment counts are a stock: everyone registered in the census snapshot, whether they started six weeks or six years ago. That has three consequences worth understanding before you build an argument on the numbers. A stock moves slowly — a dramatic fall in new starts takes years to show fully in the total, because continuing students dominate the count; so a flat total can conceal a shrinking pipeline, and the entrant figures elsewhere in the same bulletin are the earlier warning light. Multi-year programmes mechanically inflate stocks relative to one-year degrees — doctoral candidates each appear in three to five consecutive snapshots, a taught master’s student in one, so comparing PGR and PGT headcounts as if they measured annual demand misleads. And part-time and dormant registrations sit inside the same total as full-time candidates, which matters whenever you translate headcount into anything like research capacity. None of this is a flaw in the data; it is what enrolment data is. The errors come from quoting it as if it were something else.
How international is the UK doctorate?
Here is the caveat this page exists to enforce: SB273 does not break down domicile to the PGR level in its headline tables. A widely circulated figure — about 65 per cent of full-time postgraduates being non-EU internationally domiciled — describes all full-time postgraduates, taught and research combined, and must not be presented as a doctoral statistic. The honest sentence is that international recruitment matters substantially to UK doctoral education, and that anyone needing a precise PGR-level domicile split should pull it from HESA’s detailed tables for the year in question rather than quoting the postgraduate-wide number.
What these numbers do not tell you
Enrolment data measures the population, not its experience or outcomes. It says nothing about completion rates or times — which HESA does not publish as a PGR headline series — nothing about funding status (the same bulletin does not split self-funded from studentship-funded candidates), and nothing about examination outcomes, where the sector-wide dataset simply does not exist and the best available architecture data comes from institutional-documentation research covered in our viva outcomes analysis. Doctoral candidates are also invisible in undergraduate-facing statistics: degree classifications, for instance, end at the taught level — the classification data we compile on our undergraduate site has no doctoral column because a PhD is pass/fail.
How to cite these figures
Attribute to HESA, Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2024/25 (SB273, released 27 January 2026), and name the category precisely: “postgraduate research students” for the 121,175; “students on research doctorates” for the 110,455. Use academic years, not calendar years. If you are writing about “PhD students” loosely, the doctorate figure is the defensible anchor; if about research students broadly, the PGR total is. And resist the temptation to divide or combine HESA numbers into derived statistics the bulletin does not itself publish — every transformation you perform becomes your claim, not HESA’s.
Three worked sentences you can adapt directly. For a thesis introduction: “In 2024/25 the UK’s postgraduate research population stood at 121,175, of whom 110,455 were registered on research doctorates (HESA, 2026).” For a trend claim: “PGR enrolments have fluctuated within a band of roughly 113,000–124,000 over the five years to 2024/25 (HESA, 2026).” For a composition claim: “Women make up 55 per cent of UK postgraduate researchers (HESA, 2026).” Each names the population, the year and the source — the three elements markers and reviewers check first.
Why the population size matters to you
If you are one of the 121,175, the number reframes two common doctoral feelings. The isolation is structural, not personal: you are one of a hundred-odd thousand people doing the least standardised degree in the system, most of whom also believe everyone else got an instruction manual. And the competition framing is mostly wrong: the relevant comparison group for your thesis is not 121,174 rivals but the handful of examiners who will read it against the criteria of your own institution. The work that moves you through that examination — a structured thesis, written steadily — is the same regardless of cohort size. Tesify keeps that structure and the writing moving — chapters, drafts and bibliography in one workspace, 100% written by you.
Frequently asked questions
How many PhD students are there in the UK?
110,455 students were registered on research doctorates in 2024/25, within a total postgraduate research population of 121,175 (HESA SB273, January 2026).
Is the UK doctoral population growing or shrinking?
Neither cleanly: 114,405 (2020/21), 113,310, 123,660, 119,015, then 121,175 (2024/25). A spike, a correction, a partial recovery — quote the series, not two hand-picked points.
What share of UK PhD students are women?
55 per cent of postgraduate research students are female (HESA SB273, 2024/25).
How many international PhD students does the UK have?
SB273’s headline tables do not split domicile at the PGR level. The often-quoted ~65 per cent non-EU figure covers all full-time postgraduates including taught master’s students — citing it as a doctoral statistic is a misquote. Use HESA’s detailed tables for a PGR-level split.
What is the difference between PGR and PhD in the statistics?
PGR (postgraduate research) is the umbrella: research doctorates (110,455) plus research master’s, MPhil and similar (10,635). All PhDs are PGR; not all PGR students are PhD candidates.
How many PhDs are awarded in the UK each year?
That is a qualifications-obtained figure, published separately in HESA’s qualifications tables rather than the enrolment series quoted here. Take it from the same bulletin’s qualifications section for the year you need.
What proportion of UK students are doctoral candidates?
Postgraduate researchers are a small minority of the student body — on the order of one in twenty — which is why PGR-specific policy and data so often lag the undergraduate-focused headlines.
Does HESA publish PhD completion rates?
Not as a routine headline series. Completion and submission-time analyses come from funders and one-off studies; be suspicious of any precise “UK PhD completion rate” quoted without a named source and year.
Where does HESA’s data come from?
From statutory data returns made by higher education providers each year, compiled by HESA (part of Jisc) — it is administrative data covering the sector, not a survey estimate.
Where do I find the numbers for one university?
HESA publishes provider-level open data alongside the bulletin — enrolments by level of study per institution — and universities repeat headline counts in annual reports. For anything finer, the institution’s planning office is the source.