Higher Education Statistics Agency

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) was the official agency for the collection, analysis and dissemination of quantitative information about higher education in the United Kingdom. HESA became a directorate of Jisc after a merger in 2022.

HESA was set up by agreement between the relevant government departments, the higher education funding councils and the universities and colleges in 1993, following the White Paper "Higher Education: a new framework", which called for more coherence in HE statistics, and the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which established an integrated higher education system throughout the United Kingdom. In 2018 HESA became the Designated Data Body for higher education in England under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, with designation passing to Jisc after the 2022 merger.

HESA collected data from all publicly funded higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK as well as a small number of private providers. The annual data collection streams were:

HESA published statistics and analyses based on the data it collects:

Jisc processes HESA data to provide data extracts for research and publication by external users such as league tables of British universities.