Inequalities in higher education attainment
About 2 mins
Key points
- People of Chinese and Indian backgrounds, women, younger people and non-disabled people are more likely to have degree-level qualifications or higher.
Education plays an important role in shaping people’s health by influencing factors such as income and employment. It can also support better health literacy, making it easier for people to understand health information and allow more informed health choices as a result.
This chart shows the proportion of people aged 25–64 in the UK who have a degree-level qualification or higher by 2022–24 by ethnicity, sex, age and disability.
- People from a Chinese background are almost twice as likely (55.9%) to have a degree-level qualification as people from a Bangladeshi background (30.8%).
- Degree attainment is similar between men and women, but slightly higher among women – 38.8% compared with 36.4% of men.
- Degree attainment is highest amongst 25 to 29-year-olds, with 46.7% holding a degree. This percentage generally drops as ages increase, with 24.4% of people aged 60 to 64 holding a degree. This is consistent with the increase in degree qualifications in the UK, over time.
- Considerably more non-disabled people (41.6%) have degrees than disabled people (25.5%).
This analysis focuses on 25 to 64-year-olds. Given that there have been improvements in educational outcomes for students from minority ethnic groups in recent years, inequalities by ethnicity are likely to vary if focusing on different cohorts during school closures.
- The data presented here are weighted estimates from the Annual Population Survey, an ongoing survey of households in the UK.
- Degree level qualifications refer to RQF level 6 or higher.
- A person is considered disabled if they have a physical or mental health problem that has lasted or is expected to last a year or longer and limits a person’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Source: Office for National Statistics, Annual Population Survey Three-Year Pooled Dataset, UK, 2022–24
