The UK is always a popular option for postgraduate studies abroad nowadays and receives it’s fair share of educational tourism from all over the world.
A question that may arise out of many planning to go study for a course in the UK could be; what courses do other students actually pick?
The table below gives the latest official numbers for international students studying different subjects at postgraduate levels (Masters degrees, as well as shorter courses like Postgraduate Certificates and Diplomas, but not PhDs) at UK universities. It also shows what percentage of students studying that subject are from outside the UK, so you can see how ‘international’ a subject is. You can read a little bit more about the data at the bottom of this page.
| Subject | Students | % Int. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Business & Administrative Studies | 59,290 | 62 |
| 2 | Economics, Politics, Sociology& other Social Studies | 14,645 | 34 |
| 3 | Engineering & Technology | 13,695 | 58 |
| 4 | Creative Arts & Design | 9,895 | 44 |
| 5 | Law | 7,625 | 42 |
| 6 | Education (including Teacher Training) | 7,325 | 11 |
| 7 | Computer Science | 6,255 | 44 |
| 8 | Nursing, Health and other Subjects Allied to Medicine | 6,220 | 10 |
| 9 | Mass Communications & Media Studies | 5,325 | 50 |
| 10 | Biological Sciences | 5,240 | 18 |
| 11 | Architecture, Building & Planning | 5,200 | 35 |
| 12 | Languages, Literature, Linguistics & Classics | 4,335 | 40 |
| 13 | Physical Sciences | 2,895 | 37 |
| 14 | Medicine & Dentistry | 2,575 | 22 |
| 15 | Archaeology & Philosophy | 2,525 | 25 |
| 16 | Mathematical Sciences | 2,155 | 54 |
| 17 | Agriculture | 925 | 33 |
| 18 | Veterinary Science | 230 | 13 |
| The information in this table is based on official HESA statistics for student numbers in the 2017-18 academic year. | |||
From the table, the UK is a very popular choice for international students looking for MBAs and other Business Masters degrees. In fact, most of the people studying a UK Masters degree in Business & Management will be international students.
Other very popular courses for international students include Engineering and Mathematics (where the majority of Masters students are from outside the UK) as well as Computer Science, Law and the Creative Arts.
