Official university data can help you compare courses more effectively, but only if you understand what the figures measure, where they come from and what they leave out.
Before trusting any university statistic, check whether it describes the course you are considering, the wider subject area, or the university as a whole. Those are very different types of evidence.
Discover Uni is the official UK course data site. It brings together official statistics from national surveys, government data and information collected from universities and colleges. Its purpose is to help applicants compare what and where to study using evidence rather than reputation alone.
If you are comparing courses, the most useful figures are:
- continuation rates;
- student views from the National Student Survey;
- graduate outcomes after the course;
- earnings data, with care;
- entry information from previous applicants.
Use continuation rates to spot courses worth investigating
Continuation data shows what students are doing one year after starting the course. On Discover Uni, this is shown as the continuation rate.
A high continuation rate suggests that students are progressing successfully into the next stage of study. A low continuation rate does not prove that the course is poor, because students leave university for different reasons.
If two similar courses show a large difference in continuation, check what else differs. Look at the structure of the first year, academic support, assessment methods, commuting demands, placement requirements and student comments at open days.
A continuation rate of 96% compared with 94% should not decide your UCAS choices. A much wider gap should prompt questions.
For a wider view of how data sits alongside league tables, read How should you use university rankings and league tables?.
Student satisfaction data comes mainly from the National Student Survey. The NSS asks final-year students about areas such as teaching, learning opportunities, assessment and feedback, academic support, organisation and management, learning resources, student voice and mental wellbeing services.
A course with strong teaching scores and weak assessment feedback scores is telling you something specific: students value the teaching, but feedback on work may be slower, less detailed or less useful. A course with weak scores across teaching, organisation and academic support raises a broader concern.
Check the sample size before giving too much weight to the result. Discover Uni publishes survey data only where at least 10 students responded and the response rate is at least 50%. It may also combine two years of data or group courses together where there is not enough course-level data.
Discover Uni also warns against making decisions based on small differences between courses, especially where sample sizes are small. A difference of a few percentage points is not enough to rank courses confidently.
Be careful with “overall satisfaction”. The overall satisfaction question is asked in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not in England. The Office for Students also explains that it uses a different response scale from other NSS questions, so it should not be treated as a simple UK-wide comparison.
For more detail, read Can I trust university student satisfaction scores?.
Graduate outcomes show previous destinations, not future guarantees
The Graduate Outcomes survey collects information 15 months after graduates finish their course. Discover Uni uses this to show employment, further study, earnings and graduates’ views about their work.
If one course has a much stronger pattern of graduates moving into work or further study, investigate why. It may relate to placement years, professional accreditation, employer links, course content or location.
The data still describes previous cohorts. It does not tell you what will happen to you. Graduate outcomes are shaped by subject choice, prior attainment, region, career aims, labour market conditions and personal circumstances, as well as by the university itself.
If graduate outcomes look unusually strong or weak, check whether the course has placements, professional accreditation, strong employer links, a particular regional labour market, or a student intake that already points towards those outcomes.
Salary data is useful only when you know what it measures
Salary figures are tempting because they look precise. A course showing higher earnings can seem stronger than a course showing lower earnings, but the figure may not be measuring the course as directly as it appears.
On Discover Uni, some salary figures come from Graduate Outcomes. These describe graduates around 15 months after finishing their course and are based on survey responses. Other figures come from Longitudinal Education Outcomes, known as LEO, which uses government tax records to look at earnings several years after graduation.
Those two datasets answer different questions. Graduate Outcomes gives a shorter-term picture of what recent graduates reported after leaving university. LEO gives a longer-term earnings picture, but Discover Uni does not publish LEO data for individual courses. It groups the data into subject areas and uses two years’ worth of graduates.
The University of Reading’s Business and Management course page shows the problem clearly. Its earnings figures come from all Business and management courses at the university because there was not enough data to publish more specific information. The figure can still give useful context, but it is not exact evidence about one named course.
The Department for Education’s LEO provider-level data is also based on raw outcomes. It does not control for all differences in students’ backgrounds, choices or experiences. A university with high graduate earnings may be recruiting students who were already likely to enter higher-paid work.
Entry data is not an offer calculator
Discover Uni and UCAS historical entry grades data show qualifications held by previous entrants. This is not the same as the entry requirements for the course.
If previous entrants mostly had very high grades, the course is likely to be competitive. That does not tell you your chance of receiving an offer. Admissions decisions can involve subject requirements, interviews, admissions tests, portfolios, contextual offers and changes in competition between application cycles.
Use entry data to judge realism. Use the official course page to check the actual requirements.
Build a picture before choosing your UCAS five
A sensible course comparison should bring several pieces of evidence together:
- continuation rates;
- NSS scores by category;
- graduate outcomes;
- salary data, with the right caveats;
- entry profiles;
- course modules;
- assessment methods;
- placements, accreditation and location.
For source checking more broadly, read How do you know which university information to trust?.
