1. European Tertiary Education Register
Oliver Heiden
DG EAC
Education and Training Statistics Working Group, Luxembourg June 2018

2. What is ETER? ETER  European Tertiary Education Register
Goal: construct a register of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and collect comparable data on them
Timeframe:
National Statistical Authorities provide most of the data
Service Contract of DG EAC with DG RTD and Eurostat
Implemented by five university and civil society partners

3. ETER vs. Eurostat Products
Level of Data Aggregation
ETER: data are at the level of individual HEI's
Eurostat: data are national aggregates
ETER permits fine-grained analysis of HEI characteristics
HEI size, function, subject, etc.
Differences between countries
Statistical inference on HEI characteristics

4. What is the data coverage?
About 2700 HEIs
17m. students (approximately 85% of tertiary education students)
32 Countries
EU-28 + EFTA + CC
Note: BE(fr), SI, RO, ME, and TR only list their HEIs
Four years

5. What entities are included?
Universities, colleges, schools of arts, etc.
Recognizable distinct organizations
Nationally recognised as an HEI
Provide tertiary education at ISCED 2011 level 5,6,7, and/or 8
Exclusions
RPOs
Delivering tertiary education is side activity
Professional associations
Very small HEIs (<200 students or <30 units of staff)

6. What variables are reported?
Institutional Descriptors
Legal status, institutional type, foundation year
Geographical Info. (NUTS-3, postcode, geo coord.)
Staff
Total vs. academic with certain demographic information
Expenditures and Revenues (limited)
Students and Graduates
ISCED-2011 level, gender, citizenship, mobility, FOE
Erasmus student mobility
Research
NOTE: Currently most data is cross-sectional. In future, panels will be available.

7. What policy questions can ETER help address?
Do we have too many universities?
Should we have less/more geographically concentrated universities?
Should we concentrate resources in a small number of institutions?
Do we need more specialist universities in dedicated fields?
Are our universities too dependent on government funding?

8. Distribution of HEIs per year of foundation

9. Many small HEIs (private, specialized)
The core of the system is composed by large generalist universities

10. Geographical distribution of specialized HEIs

11. PhD intensity by country

12. Internationalization of academic staff
Large differences between countries
But also between HEIs within countries

13. Internationalization of student body
Mobility increases strongly by educ. level
Differences between HEIs too
High rates at the BA and MA level are exceptional

14. Thank-you. Oliver Heiden Policy Officer DG EAC.A.4
Evidence-Based Policy and Evaluation
Directorate-General for Education and Culture
European Commission
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