Who studies SHAPE? The British Academy launches interactive tool uncovering student access, mobility and subject trends

The British Academy has today launched Who studies SHAPE?, a new interactive data tool that, for the first time, provides a detailed picture of how SHAPE (social sciences, humanities and arts for people and economy) participation in UK higher education varies by subject, student background, and whether students have moved away from home to study.

Findings from the dashboard include:

• SHAPE subjects make up 57% of all UK higher education enrolments – continuing to attract the majority of UK students, although numbers vary significantly across subjects
• For example, business and management, social work and education have grown while politics, sociology and archaeology have declined
• First-degree SHAPE students in England from the most deprived areas are almost twice as likely to live at home during term time as those from the least deprived areas, reflecting the impact of financial pressures on study choices
• There are large gaps in who can move to study between different subjects, and these disparities risk deepening inequalities for young people. In history, for example, 75% of students from the least deprived areas study outside their home region, compared with 46% from the most deprived areas.

The dashboard enables users to explore patterns of SHAPE participation in UK higher education, including which subjects are growing or declining, how groups of students are represented across subjects, and where students study in relation to where they come from. It also highlights whether students remain in their home regions or are able to move elsewhere for their studies.

By bringing these insights together in one place for the first time, the tool makes it easier to understand how access to SHAPE subjects varies across both disciplines and student groups. It provides an overview of changes in participation over time, alongside more detailed analysis of student characteristics, geographic distribution, and study patterns across the UK.

Professor Margot Finn, Vice-President of Higher Education and Research Policy at the British Academy, said:

“This new tool brings together data in one place to offer, for the first time, a system wide view of who is studying SHAPE subjects across UK higher education. It allows us to track participation over time, understand patterns across disciplines, and build a much clearer picture of how and where students engage with these subjects.

“SHAPE graduates develop vital skills for understanding the human world: how people live, organise, govern and communicate. By strengthening the evidence base on who studies these subjects, we can better support a higher education system that equips people to analyse complexity, interpret evidence and work across differences. These are skills in high demand from employers that are also essential for addressing the major challenges of our time, from intercultural understanding to rapid technological change.”

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