Part 2 Introduction

Despite representing around 5% of the UK population (ONS, 2017)¹, and 8.1% of the school age population (MCB, 2015)², British Muslims represent 11% of all UK domiciled undergradaute entrants into university³. In addition, approximately 72% 18 year-olds in the UK go onto university, whereas this figure is 90% amongst British Muslims⁴.

Whilst these figures are encouraging for British Muslims, a detailed examination into the representation of Muslim students in UK universities across subjects, levels and domiciles is more revealing.

2.1 About this paper

This paper seeks to provide a descriptive account of Muslims in higher education from 2017/18 to 2020/21, using data released by the Office for Students (OfS) in 2022⁵. This paper may serve as a starting point for researchers and policymakers in the study of Muslims in the UK, and in higher education in particular.

2.2 Methodology

The data is sourced from the Equality, diversity and student characteristics data from the Office for Students (OfS), published on 7th June 2022⁶

Below is a summary of the methodology adopted by the OfS, detailed in Annex A of the Equality, diversity and student characteristics data report⁷:

When statistics are split by subject, students studying more than one subject are partially counted for each subject. For instance, a student studying half English and half history would be counted as 0.5 in each subject
Counts have been rounded to the nearest 10
In addition, counts and proportions are suppressed where there are fewer than 25 students in the category shown
Data on Religion and Belief are sourced from: (1) The Higher Education Statistics Agency's (HESA's) Student record, and (2) the HESA's Student Alternative (SA) record (formerly known as the Alternative Provider record)

The OfS groups detailed subjects into broad subject areas according to the table below: