About our data

The National Student Survey (NSS) asks final-year students about their experience of university or college.

Universities and colleges use the results to improve their courses and prospective students can use the information when comparing courses.

The survey runs each year across the UK.

Students are asked about:

• teaching
• learning opportunities
• assessment and feedback
• academic support
• course organisation and management
• learning resources
• student voice
• mental wellbeing services
• freedom of expression (for students in England only)
• overall satisfaction (for students in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales only)

2026 survey results

In 2026:

• 71.8% of eligible students completed the survey
• more than 360,000 students responded.

Compared with 2025, positive responses increased across all survey themes in the UK.

You can see the NSS 2026 data dashboard and further information on the 2026 NSS dataset on the OfS website.

The NSS data displayed on Discover Uni is from the 2026 National Student Survey.

How we publish NSS data

The data is from the National Student Survey published in 2026, which includes responses from final-year students in the 2025-26 academic year.

In some cases, we may not have enough data to publish the information from the most recent cohort of students. Where this happens, we combine two years of survey data, which will include responses from the most recent cohort and responses to the 2024-25 survey.

We only publish NSS results when:

• at least 10 students responded
• at least 50% of eligible students completed the survey

Where there is not enough data from one year, we may combine two years of survey results. This helps us to show reliable information while protecting students' privacy.

If we have combined two years of data, we tell you this on the course page.

In some cases, we may not have enough data to publish the information at course level, or the course may have multiple instances of data associated with it (for example, some joint honours courses). In these cases, we may group data for the subject instead.

Please see our ‘understanding the data’ section below for more information about how we display the data on our course pages.

Theme measures

The theme measures summarise groups of NSS question responses into overall themes.

We calculate them by combining the positive responses to similar questions and displaying them as a single value for the theme. See the About the NSS data page within the ‘Understanding the NSS data’ section for further information on how we calculate the theme scores.

The theme measures give prospective students an overview of students’ experiences on the course.

The Graduate Outcomes survey asks graduates what they are doing 15 months after finishing their course.

The survey collects information about:

• whether graduates are working, studying, or doing both
• how much they earn
• how they feel about their work
• whether their work fits with their future plans.

The survey is run by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

Graduate Outcomes results

The 2026 Graduate Outcomes data includes responses from graduates who completed their courses in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

More than 353,000 graduates responded to the latest survey.

Analysis of the data by HESA shows that:

• 87% of graduates were in some form of work or further study
• 5% were studying full time
• 85% said their current activity was meaningful
• 76% said their current activity matched their future plans
• 7% were unemployed
• 81% were in employment or unpaid work
• Most graduates in employment were working full time.

See further information on the Graduate Outcomes website and on the HESA website.

The GO data displayed on Discover Uni is from the 2026 Graduate Outcomes Survey.

How we publish GO data

The data we show on Discover Uni is from the 2026 Graduate Outcomes survey, which covers graduates who finished their higher education courses between August 2023 and July 2024.

We only publish Graduate Outcomes data when:

• at least 10 graduates responded
• at least 50% of eligible graduates completed the survey.

We combine two years of survey data when there are not enough students in the most recent year of data (for graduates from 2022-23 and 2023-24) for us to publish it. Each course page shows whether the data is using one year or two years of survey data.

Our earnings and employment page provides more information on how to use the data provided on Discover Uni.

Earnings after the course

This section shows what graduates were earning 15 months after finishing their course.

The salary shown is the median salary.

The median salary is found by listing all salaries for a group of people from lowest to highest, then selecting the middle value. The median salary could be described therefore as the "typical" salary for a group of people.

You can also use the drop-down menu to view Graduate Outcomes earnings data at UK level or national level (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales). We publish this data to provide context.

This means that you can see the median earnings for graduates from all courses in the subject that live or work in the selected location. Because the median earnings for a region may be higher or lower than the median earnings at national or UK level, we also include the percentage of graduates from the institution that are based in the chosen region. This indicates whether the regional figure you have chosen is a good benchmark for the institution.

We do not include earnings data for those that are self-employed.

You will also find earnings data in this section from the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset, which shows the longer-term earnings of graduates from a subject area. The LEO data shows the median earnings for earlier cohorts of graduates in the same subject three and five years after their graduation.

Please see the LEO section below for more details.

Employment 15 months after the course

This section shows what graduates were doing 15 months after completing their course.

It includes the percentage of graduates who were:

• working
• studying
• working and studying
• unemployed.

It also shows the types of jobs graduates are working in 15 months after graduating, and whether these jobs are classed as highly skilled occupations (meaning they are considered to be professional or managerial occupations by the Office for National Statistics). Occupations have been classified using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020 system.

Graduate perceptions

This section shows how graduates felt about their course and their current activity 15 months after graduation.

It includes the percentage of graduates who said:

• what they learned was useful in their current activity
• their work was meaningful
• their work matched their future plans.

You can find more information on the Graduate Outcomes and HESA websites.

See our Employment and earnings page for further information on how this information can help with your course research.

The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset uses government tax records to show how much graduates earn after university or college.

Unlike surveys, graduates do not need to respond for their information to be included.

We use LEO data to show graduate earnings three and five years after graduation. The data is shown for subject areas rather than individual courses.

The LEO data is displayed for students who graduated between 2015 and 2017. This data can help you understand the longer-term earnings of graduates from a subject area.

Earnings are only one part of choosing a course. Factors such as job satisfaction, career goals, location, and further study choices can also affect graduate outcomes. For this reason, we recommend using LEO data alongside the other information available on Discover Uni.

About the LEO data displayed on Discover Uni

There are some things you should be aware of when using the LEO data on Discover Uni:

• LEO data is only available for courses taught in England, Scotland and Wales. LEO data is not available for courses in Northern Ireland.
• The LEO data shows how much graduates working in the UK were earning three years and five years after graduating. The data shows these statistics for the same cohort of students.
• The data includes taxable income for those who had tax deducted at source by their employer. It does not include earnings for those who were self-employed.
• The data published is for the subject area of the course over two tax years. We only publish when we have LEO data for at least 15 graduates.
• The data contains earnings for both full-time and part-time workers, meaning figures may appear lower where more graduates are choosing to work part time.

The LEO data displayed on Discover Uni is from the 2025 data. The 2026 LEO data will be published on Discover Uni in November 2026.

How we publish LEO data

The LEO data on Discover Uni covers graduates who finished their studies between 2015 and 2017.

We use it to show the typical earnings of graduates from the same subject area at a university or college.

The earnings data is grouped into subject areas for two years’ worth of graduates. We do not publish LEO data for individual courses.

Earnings after the course

The salaries shown in bold in the 'Earnings after the course' section are median salaries.

The median salary is found by listing all salaries for a group of people from lowest to highest, then selecting the middle value. The median salary could be described therefore as the "typical" salary for a group of people.

We use LEO data in this section on the course pages on Discover Uni to show median earnings for the same group of students three and five years after their graduation. The data on Discover Uni relates to all graduates in a specific subject area at the institution, not graduates from a specific course (unless only one course was taught in the specified subject area).

You can also use the drop-down menu to see LEO earnings data at:

• UK level (excluding graduates from Northern Irish institutions)
• national level (England, Scotland or Wales)
• regions within England
• core cities in Wales and Scotland.

Data for Northern Ireland is not included because the LEO dataset does not include data from Northern Irish graduates.

This means that you can see the median earnings for all graduates in the subject area in the selected location. Because the median earnings for a region may be higher or lower than the median earnings at national or UK level, we also include the percentage of graduates from the institution that are based in the chosen region. This indicates whether the regional figure you have chosen is a good benchmark for the institution. This helps you understand how earnings can vary depending on where graduates live and work.

You can also compare these figures with earnings from the Graduate Outcomes survey, which shows earnings 15 months after graduation.

Our ‘employment and earnings’ page provides more information on how to use the earnings data provided on Discover Uni.

You can also find out how the statistics are produced and provide feedback on the Office for Students website.

The LEO data used on Discover Uni is owned by the Department for Education (DfE). The DfE does not accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived from the LEO data by third parties.

The UK higher education funding and regulatory bodies collect data from universities and colleges about all their individual students. We use this data to create some of the statistics we use.

The datasets we use are the:

HESA Student record

HESA AP Student record

Individualised Learner Record.

The data we use is for the academic years 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 unless otherwise specified.

Continuation

Continuation shows how many students are still studying their course one year after they start.

This is called the continuation rate.

The figures show the percentage of:

• Students who started in 2022-23 and continued into 2023-24
• Students who started in 2023-24 and continued into 2024-25.

Some students leave their course or take a break during the first year. This can happen for many reasons.

A higher continuation rate can be a good sign, but it is only one piece of information. The figures show what happened at a particular time and do not show a long-term trend. If a course has a much lower continuation rate than similar courses, it may suggest that students' expectations are not being met.

Entry information

This section shows the qualifications and UCAS Tariff points of students who previously joined the course. It does not show the course entry requirements.

The information gives an idea of:

• The types of qualifications students had
• The grades they achieved before starting the course.

Universities and colleges look at many things when deciding who to offer a place to, not just qualifications and grades.

The UCAS Tariff point data is mainly based on students who started in 2024-25. In some cases, we combine data from both 2023-24 and 2024-25 when there are too few students to publish data from a single year.

Some universities accept qualifications that are not included in the UCAS Tariff system. Because of this, tariff points may not fully represent the qualifications of all students on some courses, especially where there are many international students.

We do not publish UCAS Tariff information for part-time courses. This is because many part-time students apply through different routes or have different qualifications, and their information may not appear in the dataset.

For more information about UCAS Tariff and entry requirements, see our ‘Entry requirements’ page.

Accreditation

An accredited course has been checked and approved by one or more professional bodies.

This means the learning and achievement of graduates meets the professional benchmarks and standards set by the accrediting body.

If you’re studying to get into a particular career, you may need to take a course with professional accreditation, or sometimes accreditations show that employers endorse the course. This means that they recognise it gives students skills and knowledge for employment in a particular sector or job role.

Discover Uni course pages explain any professional accreditation and why it matters to students. For example, an accredited course may meet the requirements for working in a particular profession. Each listed accreditation links to further information on the professional body’s website.

Providers submit the accreditation information for their courses, selecting from a list of approved and/or prescribed accreditations including those set by the Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs). You can see any professional accreditations, and what these mean for students, on our course pages and find further information on the professional body’s website.

See further information on professional accreditations.

Using data in your decision making

The data that we publish on Discover Uni is from reliable sources and can help you make an informed decision.

It’s important that you don’t make decisions based on small differences between courses. Instead look for large differences, and particularly where figures are much lower than for other courses you are considering. Read our guidance on how to compare courses.

Sample sizes and response rates

On Discover Uni we tell you how many students the data we publish is from and, if it was from a survey, the response rate.

These numbers might be smaller than you expect, as we try to publish data for the course and not all courses have large numbers of students on them.

A high response rate from a large number of students means you can be more confident in the data. With smaller numbers, it is especially important that you don’t make decisions based on small differences.

We only publish data if we have it for more than a certain number of students. This is partly to protect their identity and partly to ensure the reliability of what we publish. For surveys, we also don’t publish data if response rates are low.

For most of the data, we need data from at least 10 students to publish it. For LEO, we need at least 15 students.

Small courses

For many smaller courses, we may not have data from enough students to be able to publish it. So that we can show some data, we group data for courses in the same subject area at that university or college.

We say where we have done this on the course page and course comparison tool.

Joint honours and courses with data for multiple subjects

Some courses cover more than one subject area, sometimes leading to an award known as joint honours (such as “BSc Mathematics and Computer Science”). Where a course has more than one subject, we try to present data items based only on the people studying that course.

Sometimes if there are not enough people studying the course, or not enough of them reply to a survey, we include data for everyone at the institution studying courses that include those subjects. For instance, this means in our example above we would present figures separately for Mathematics and for Computer Science. These are presented as tabs on the course pages. Some very broad courses with open choices between lots of modules can have as many as five subject areas, or even more.

When thinking about a course where multiple subject level figures are presented, it is important to look at all the subjects. You should also think about how these subject figures may reflect the course you are looking at, which perhaps only represent a small number of students within those subject areas.

Subcontracted or franchised courses

Sometimes a course is ‘subcontracted’. This means a university or college allows another organisation to deliver all or part of a higher education course on its behalf. These are also known as subcontractual partnerships, collaborative provision, franchised arrangements or franchising.

Under such arrangements, students will register with a university or college, but a separate university, college or organisation will teach them for all or part of the course. Students will pay tuition fees to the lead provider, either directly or via the Student Loans Company (SLC). The lead provider will pass a proportion of the tuition fees to the teaching partner.

The lead provider is responsible for the overall teaching quality and student experience on the course delivered from another provider.

When researching courses, it’s important for prospective students to be aware if all or part of the course is subcontracted so you know where you will be taught and can do some further research.

If a course is franchised, this is labelled on the course page on Discover Uni where the registered provider and teaching provider will be included.

New courses

Where courses are new or don’t have any students who have finished them yet, we publish data for other courses in that subject area. This is to give you some idea of the student experience and outcomes at that university and college. We note where we have done this on the course page.

Rounding

We publish National Student Survey data to the nearest percentage point. For other data, if we have data for fewer than 52.5 people, we round the data to the nearest five percentage points. We also always round the numbers of people to the nearest five.

This can mean that the figures shown do not always add to 100%. The total may instead be 95% or 105% when you add them together.

Feedback

We would welcome feedback on how useful the statistics are and what can be done to improve them. You can contact us using our contact details on the 'about Discover Uni' page.

Discover Uni is owned and operated by the UK higher education funding and regulatory bodies.

Each funding and regulatory body monitors the quality of the universities and colleges within their nation. Discover Uni includes quality and standards information about universities and colleges, which helps you to see how the university or college has been reviewed by the funding and regulatory body.

This information can be found on the university or college page on the Discover Uni website.

Universities and colleges in England – The Office for Students

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) is a national scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS) that aims to encourage higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence in the areas that students care about the most: teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes from their studies.

The TEF does this by assessing and rating universities and colleges for excellence above a set of minimum requirements for quality and standards. Providers that take part in the TEF receive an overall rating as well as two underpinning ratings – one for the student experience and one for student outcomes.

You can access these by clicking on the university or college name on each course page. Find out more about the TEF on the Office for Students website.

The TEF is an exercise facilitated by the Office for Students in England. Universities and Colleges in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are able to participate in the TEF on a voluntary basis.

Universities and colleges in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) is the designated quality body in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The QAA monitors the quality and standards of the teaching in universities and colleges on behalf of the funding and regulatory bodies in each nation. The QAA completes quality assurance reviews and publishes a report to summarise their findings. The QAA reports can be found on the provider pages on Discover Uni, which you can access by clicking on the institution name on each course page. Find out more about quality and standards.