The Studentship Data System is now live. It will enable research organisations to manage studentship records more efficiently, improving data accuracy and supporting better reporting and analysis across UKRI.
Training videos and the webinar recording from November 2025 are available from the UKRI YouTube Studentship playlist.
Data migration
All active studentships have been migrated. This includes all students that have not yet submitted their thesis and been awarded a qualification. Completed studentship records were migrated where they were linked to an active or recently closed training grant.
Other studentship records will be archived by UKRI in line with our retention policies.
Deadlines for adding and updating records
All new studentship records need to be created on the new system. Research organisations should prioritise creating new studentship records over amending existing records. The deadline to submit new records for students who started in the 2025 to 2026 academic year is 16 January 2026.
Any changes to existing records should be added to the new system by 27 February 2026.
Final Expenditure Statement process
The final expenditure statement process will continue to be processed through Je-S and the UKRI Funding Service. The studentship details will be downloaded from the new system and attached to the final expenditure statement submission.
Accessing the studentship data system
The system is a different platform to the UKRI Funding Service but it has a similar design and build.
New accounts have been created for users. Lead account and general users that have previously been nominated have received login details to access the new system. Studentship Data System lead account holders will have the ability to create user accounts for members of their organisation.
Improvements to data capture
The data fields that we collect have been reviewed and consolidated. Where possible, we have aimed to reduce the amount of information requested as well as make it clearer in what we need. For example, we have reduced the number of ‘dates’ and ‘funding’ data that is required and strengthened guidance and validation in the system.
The diversity data question set has also been reviewed across UKRI, and we have aligned this with what HESA currently collects. These will be the questions used for the applicant pool data set in the UKRI training grant annual reports (2026 reports onwards). These questions should be built into your next recruitment cycles so that the data is available.
Training grant holders may not be able to report on all categories for the 2026 intake. You should make sure this is in place for the next recruitment cycle.
We will no longer collect information on the supervisors linked to the studentships.
Student references
UKRI will be transferring from Je-S Personal Identifiers (PIDs) to a UKRI Studentship reference number (UKRI SRN). This reference should be used when entering details into the HESA data collection exercise. All existing studentships have a UKRI SRN and both the Je-S PID and UKRI SRN will be available on the new system.
The annual submission rate survey
This will no longer be a separate exercise.
The data requested will form part of the main studentship record once it has been created. This gives the research organisation flexibility to update the records at any point in the year.
Research councils can take a snapshot of the data and use this to review the submission rates.
UKRI studentships funded through research grants
All UKRI-funded studentships will be captured on the new system so research organisations can link studentships to relevant research grants as well as training grants.
Student records
Students whose record was migrated were contacted to confirm that a record had been created on the new system.
Some students may not have an active UKRI funded studentship. The training grant that the funding was associated with may still be active or recently closed and the records were migrated to the new studentship system for reporting and reconciliation activities. It is a transfer of data rather than a new record.
Information on the studentship is provided by the research organisation and contains:
- the diversity profile
- details of the research project
- studentship dates
- associated funding
Individual diversity profiles are not shared on any UKRI websites, and the data is strictly controlled within UKRI.
For UKRI to meet its obligations, aggregated information relating to the research funded will be made publicly available. This information is made available via UKRI websites, UKRI Gateway to Research and other publicly available databases, reports and other public fora.
The following information is published to Gateway to Research in relation to the studentships we fund:
- student name
- project title and summary
- lead research organisation and department
- studentship period of study
- the type of award – Studentship
If details need changing contact your research organisation. This includes name changes as well as project title and project summary updates. This will then be updated in the next available data refresh on our system.
Data is kept in line with UKRI’s retention schedule and Information Management Policy and is processed in accordance with the UK’s current data protection legislation.
Special Category Data will only be processed where UKRI needs to do so in order to comply with its legal obligations (particularly employment, social, health, disability and protection laws) or where otherwise specifically notified. For instance, Special Category Data is used to evaluate our funding from an equality, diversity and inclusion perspective and we review this data across our doctoral funding.
The data is encrypted using strong industry-standard encryption (AES-256).
As the information is processed under UKRI’s lawful basis of public task, the rights to be forgotten and erasure do not apply in this case. UKRI hold this information as you were a student funded under a studentship, and we must maintain our obligations under the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.
Keep up to date with the studentship data project
This page will be updated regularly as the work progresses and we will be in direct communication with training grant holders.
For any questions email: studentshipdataproject@ukri.org
Last updated: 24 November 2025