11 September 2026
Degrees awarded fall as Northern Ireland enrolments rise
Enrolments at Northern Ireland's five higher education institutions reached 65,695 in 2024/25, a 3% increase on the previous year and 20% higher than a decade earlier. The Department for the Economy published the figures on 10 September, drawn from Higher Education Statistics Agency returns. Undergraduate enrolments rose 5% and now account for 70% of the total, while postgraduate enrolments fell 3%.
Qualifications tell a different story. Institutions awarded 21,720 qualifications in 2024/25, down 14% on the 25,200 awarded the year before, although still 37% above the 2015/16 figure. Almost all of that fall is at postgraduate level, where awards dropped 27%. First degrees were essentially flat at 10,280 compared with 10,245 the previous year.
Students domiciled in Northern Ireland made up 71% of enrolments, with 18% from outside the EU, 6% from the Republic of Ireland and 4% from Great Britain. Among those qualifying, 47% studied broad STEM subjects and 22% narrow STEM. The pattern within that is worth noting: 50% of women qualifying were in broad STEM compared with 44% of men, but only 16% of women were in narrow STEM against 31% of men.
For practitioners, the postgraduate contraction is the figure to watch. It sits alongside rising undergraduate numbers and suggests the masters route is becoming a harder decision for students to justify, which is a conversation advisers will be having with final year undergraduates this autumn. The STEM split is the second point. Women are well represented across the wider STEM group, which includes medicine and subjects allied to medicine, but are half as likely as men to qualify in engineering, computing, and the physical and mathematical sciences. Guidance that treats STEM as a single block will miss that difference entirely.
Read more about the rise in Northern Ireland enrolments.
Qualifications tell a different story. Institutions awarded 21,720 qualifications in 2024/25, down 14% on the 25,200 awarded the year before, although still 37% above the 2015/16 figure. Almost all of that fall is at postgraduate level, where awards dropped 27%. First degrees were essentially flat at 10,280 compared with 10,245 the previous year.
Students domiciled in Northern Ireland made up 71% of enrolments, with 18% from outside the EU, 6% from the Republic of Ireland and 4% from Great Britain. Among those qualifying, 47% studied broad STEM subjects and 22% narrow STEM. The pattern within that is worth noting: 50% of women qualifying were in broad STEM compared with 44% of men, but only 16% of women were in narrow STEM against 31% of men.
For practitioners, the postgraduate contraction is the figure to watch. It sits alongside rising undergraduate numbers and suggests the masters route is becoming a harder decision for students to justify, which is a conversation advisers will be having with final year undergraduates this autumn. The STEM split is the second point. Women are well represented across the wider STEM group, which includes medicine and subjects allied to medicine, but are half as likely as men to qualify in engineering, computing, and the physical and mathematical sciences. Guidance that treats STEM as a single block will miss that difference entirely.
Read more about the rise in Northern Ireland enrolments.
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