The most popular subjects at Wales’ Universities
8 January 2024
Owain James
Ever wondered what the most popular areas of study are at Wales’ universities? You can see what the top three subject areas are for each of Wales’ universities in descending order in the graph below. 👇
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This data is from the 2020/21 academic year, and includes all years of study and degree types. This isn’t limited to people from Wales but includes all students studying within Wales wherever they are from. So this data shows what people from all over the world are coming to Wales to study, and the relative strengths of Wales’ universities.
A lot of this is as I would have expected and sometimes reflects the historic strengths of these institutions. For instance:
– ‘Medicine and dentistry’ for Cardiff University ✅
– ‘Engineering and technology’ for Swansea University✅
– ‘Biological and sport sciences’ for Cardiff Metropolitan University ✅
– ‘Design, and creative and performing arts’ for University of South Wales ✅
But there are perhaps some surprises here for me – for instance, I might have expected ‘Education and Teaching’ to feature among the top subject areas for University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and perhaps not #1 for Aberystwyth University. Nor did I realise that ‘Biological and sport sciences’ was so popular for Prifysgol Bangor, and ‘Social sciences’ for Wrexham University.
Does anything stand out for you? Any surprises? And do you think different areas should be higher up for some of these unis in the future?
[As a point of information, this data doesn’t refer to individual courses, but to groups of related subjects (using the ‘Common Aggregation Hierarchy’, to be technical). This breakdown has the benefit of giving a wider sense of the sort of subjects that are most popular – but since these aren’t specific courses these groups are wide-ranging and ‘generic’.]
