Oxford University

Education: 2021/22 HIGHLIGHTS * 26,455 students at Oxford, including 12,580 undergraduates and 13,445 postgraduates * 23,802 applications for 3,247 undergraduate places for 2022/23 entry * 68.2% of UK undergraduate admissions from state schools Overall applications for undergraduate study fell by 2.2% and the number of admitted students fell by 2.7%. The largest decreases have been amongst applicants and admitted students from the EU. Disadvantaged students are identified during the admissions process through ongoing use of contextual data, including information on eligibility for free school meals which has not previously been available. 2022 saw the return of in-person outreach, with the flagship UNIQ programme taking a hybrid approach. UNIQ welcomed 1,150 participants to Oxford for a 3-day residential course, and 300 more joined an online academic programme. After a sharp 18% increase in applications for graduate study in the previous year, applications declined by 6% to circa 37,000 in the 2021/22 admissions cycle. The University's Graduate Access Working Group continues to lead on a number of pioneering initiatives to encourage and support access to graduate study for students from underrepresented and deprived backgrounds. In 2022, the UNIQ+ graduate access research internship programme expanded and hosted 130 students in Oxford for six weeks. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, working in joint partnership, were awarded $974k as part of the OfS/UKRI competition to improve access to doctoral study for historically marginalised students. This project started in January 2022 and will run for four years with the aims to understand current selection processes and introduce interventions that would improve access. The University seeks to equip all its students with the skills and knowledge to succeed in future study or employment. Outside the curriculum, support provided for students included the following: * Over 500 financially supported research and professional internships in more than 36 countries; over 1,600 Micro-internships; and over 120 dedicated Crankstart internships * Over 7,000 1:1 sessions with a Careers Adviser * 10 careers fairs covering all industries, plus programmes such as Creative Careers week * Over 600 students taking part in "Insight Into..." programmes in teaching, medicine, academia, pharmaceuticals, publishing, and business; and * Experiential programmes organised by The Oxford Strategy Challenge, The Student Consultancy, Researcher Strategy Consultancy and The Agency providing almost 1,000 students and researchers with opportunities to work on over 100 voluntary consultancy projects for business, social enterprise, charity, and local government clients.

Academic and Educational Publishing: 2021/22 HIGHLIGHTS * More than 4,000 educational titles and 1,782 academic titles published * 170 major publishing awards won across the Press * Launch of Oxford Reading Club-a digital library with hundreds of Graded Reader eBooks to support English language learning * 9,000 people from more than 150 countries attended the English Language Teaching Online Conference * 223m active visits to journals on the Oxford Academic platform * 3.3m users of digital publications in schools * Achieved the milestone of publishing 100,000 open access articles, plus 100 fully open access journals * 20,000 titles on Oxford Scholarship Online, the digital library of research books published by the Press. Research publishing maintained good trading momentum, and continued its transition to digital. Visits by researchers or students to journal articles increased by 5% to 223 million. The Press also furthered its commitment to open access, this year reaching the important milestone of 100,000 open access articles. It now publishes more than 100 open access journals and 20,000 articles per year and the Press now has over 500 of these open access agreements in place worldwide. In reference, both Oxford Bibliographies Online and Oxford Research Encyclopaedias grew by 30% and 46% respectively. The Oxford English Dictionary also launched its OED Varieties of English page to chart the diversity of the English language around the world. The Press's academic book publishing continued to win prestigious awards, including: * The 2021 Lionel Gelber Prize for best English non-fiction book on foreign policy; * BMA Medical Book of the Year 2021 in the Public Health category; * The American Philosophical Association's 2021 BookPrize; and * A quartet of prizes at the Society of Military History's Distinguished Book Awards. In Education, schools reopened at different rates around the world. Demand for digital and blended products and services grew, with Oxford Owl and Oxford Advantage increasing in popularity. Schools Publishing turnover returned to almost pre-pandemic levels, with Kenya, Pakistan, and India showing particularly strong recoveries. However, some markets, such as China, faced regulatory changes which are impacting the Press's activities. The Learning of English continued to feel the impact of COVID-19 in many of its markets, but still achieved growth in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. In particular, digital product sales grew by 28%. In support of its digital ambitions, the Press introduced the Oxford English Hub, which will become the single destination for teachers and learners of English by enabling users to access digital course materials from one place. It has already generated more than 60,000 new user sessions and 900 trials for new courses.

Research: 2021/22 HIGHLIGHTS: * For the seventh consecutive year, ranked first in the Times Higher Education (THE) worldwide ranking of universities (both overall and for research) * Highest overall research income of any UK university including highest for UK public sector, industry and the European Commission * REF 2021 results show Oxford's submission had the highest volume of world-leading research and will make Oxford the recipient of the highest quality-related recurrent funding for research of any UK university in 2022/23 * Oxford University retains top spot for spinout generation in the UK The scale of the University's research activity is substantial, involving over 1,900 academics, almost 4,900 research staff and over 7,000 postgraduate research students. The University collaborates with other universities and research organisations, healthcare providers, businesses, community groups, charities and government agencies, nationally and internationally. The public benefits from this research include better public policy, improved health outcomes, economic prosperity, social cohesion, international development, community identity, the arts, culture and quality of life. In 2021/22 over 2,740 new research awards were received, with a cumulative value of $997m and which will be spent over the lifetime of the awards across future years. In addition, Research England provided invaluable support through Quality- Related recurrent grant funding totalling $188m. Annual research income rose in 2021/22 to $866m, an increase of 6.9% compared to 2020/21. This growth was particularly noteworthy given the continued level of disruption to research experienced across the University as a result of the pandemic. The University's leading position in so many facets of national and international research has driven this year's research income growth. Income from the UK Public Sector increased the most, from $124m in 2020/21 to $172m in 2021/22, largely due to investment made by the Department of Health & Social Care in major COVID-19 research programmes such as the PRINCIPLE trial, the Com-Cov vaccine trial, and the ONS COVID-19 Infections Survey. Other research funding highlights in the past year include: * $12m from the Leverhulme Trust to set up a new Oxford nature recovery centre, to halt and reverse the ongoing loss and degradation of nature and its biodiversity * $13m investment from Cancer Research UK to catalyse the translation of world-leading cancer research into patient benefit. An additional $3.6m is dedicated to help train the next generation of cancer researchers. * $36.5m award from British Heart Foundation to develop the first cures for inherited heart muscle diseases via gene therapy technologies. * $61m funding commitment from Serum Life Sciences to establish a Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building at Oxford University. * $13m from the LEGO foundation for an international collaboration to develop and evaluate playful parenting programmes to improve at-scale child learning outcomes and reduce violence against children.