The Datum Report

Occupation 2311 · Professional occupations

Higher education teaching professionals

Half of full-time higher education teaching professionals in the UK earn more than £52,835 a year, and half earn less.

Higher education teaching professionals deliver lectures and teach students to at least first degree level, undertake research and write journal articles and books in their chosen field of study.

How people enter it

Entry will require a good honours first degree plus a higher degree or an equivalent professional qualification. For vocational subjects, practical experience and additional qualifications may also be required. A DBS check may be required.

What the work involves

• prepares, delivers and directs lectures, seminars and tutorials
• prepares, administers and marks examinations, essays and other assignments
• advises students on academic matters and encourages independent research
• provides pastoral care or guidance to students
• participates in decision making processes regarding curricula, budgetary, departmental and other matters
• directs the work of postgraduate students
• undertakes research, writes articles and books and attends conferences and other meetings

Also called

Fellow (university) · Lecturer (higher education, university) · Professor (higher education, university) · Tutor (higher education, university) · University lecturer · University teaching assistant

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for higher education teaching professionals, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Further education teaching professionals · Nursery education teaching professionals · Primary education teaching professionals · Secondary education teaching professionals · Special and additional needs education teaching professionals · Teachers of english as a foreign language · Teaching professionals n.e.c.