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More students qualified from higher education courses in 2021-22 than at any point in the previous decade according to a new report from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
The report, published today, also found the number of students on higher education courses in 2021-22 was the highest since 2012-13, representing a year-on-year increase of 13,465 (4%) compared with the previous year.
In presenting the figures in today’s report, the authors recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic continued to have an effect on people studying in colleges and universities, creating vastly different circumstances to those normally experienced by students.
The number of postgraduate students on taught courses in Scottish universities more than doubled in the ten years between 2012-13 and 2021-22 rising from 41,530 to 83,065. This rise contributed to an overall increase in the number of people entering higher education in 2021-22. However, the report identifies differences between the numbers of people starting HE courses at different levels of the qualifications framework.
Commenting on the report, SFC’s Director of Policy, Insight and Analytics, Martin Boyle, said:
“Although the statistical patterns we have been tracking since 2012-13 were clearly disrupted by the pandemic, this latest report makes an important contribution to our picture of higher education numbers and qualifications over the past decade.
“The 10-year highs we see for the numbers of students on HE courses and gaining an HE level qualification shows how much people continued to value higher education at a time when so many aspects of people’s lives were disrupted by the pandemic.”

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