The results of the 2025 EPC Engineering Enrolments Survey are in! The exclusive annual EPC survey gives us all an early temperature check of the health of HE undergraduate and postgraduate engineering enrolments and provides early signals to changing patterns of enrolments. With all eyes on international recruitment and engineering more reliant than most on overseas enrolments, our survey is the only place you can gain this insight before official sector enrolment data for 2024/25 is available, especially at postgraduate level.
In the 2025 survey, our respondents indicated that overseas enrolments continue to contract, with the Russell Group feeling the pressure most acutely. Half of Russell Group institutions reported declines in overseas enrolments (39% of more than 10%). Meanwhile, overseas enrolments appear more stable among non-Russell Group providers; a nod to the lesser reliance on overseas enrolments (Russell Group typically have a larger share of the market).
While international demand softens, Russell Group enrolments continue to rise overall. These providers’ performance in the domestic market is strong: 54.5% reporting domestic growth exceeding 10%. Suggesting only one thing – a higher RG home market share. In our survey, 43% of distinct disciplines reported home-student growth of more than 10% (compared with around a third for non-Russell Group providers of whom 43% reported declines – against around a one-third of RG). The proportional fall in non- Russell Group enrolments relative to Russell Group gains signals a continuation of the shift in the distribution of demand we started to see in last year’s survey – which we rightly dubbed as one to watch.
Our 2025 survey clearly signals that, in effect, as Russell Group enrolments rise in lockstep with declines elsewhere, the engineering HE landscape is becoming increasingly stratified, where expansion in parts of the sector, in fact, represents redistribution, with domestic applicants concentrating in higher-status universities while mid-tier and lower-tier universities face constraint. Intensifying funding pressures – falling real-terms tuition-fee value and the high cost of engineering courses – provide strong incentives for those providers who are able to recruit more aggressively to protect income.
Taken together, these trends reflect a sector increasingly characterised by domestic-market expansion for the Russell Group, amid mounting recruitment and financial pressures across the rest of the system. The concern is that, while bums on seats may be the best fit for the resources already committed at provider level, reducing overseas subsidies – further threatened by the international levy – will leave some strategically rethinking their subject portfolios all together.
These results and trends by discipline are now showcased in our amazing members-only Data explorer service which provides you, our members, the benefit of accessing and exploring the findings through dynamic and flexible data visualisations. Using this exclusive service, you can drill down and dissect results by specific cohorts, filter to your own discipline(s) of interest and view charts, tables and data personalised to your needs. And we continue to include the data for previous surveys. Deep dive the results through our members-only Data explorer.
Please remember that this is a survey – not a data collection – but coverage of c28K students across more discrete disciplines (222) than ever before, we think it’s great. As always, many thanks to members who completed this year’s EPC engineering enrolments survey. Members can also view the launch slide deck and webinar recording here (see Event recording tab).
