Higher Education is at the heart of the national public agenda in a growing number of countries in Europe and globally. Effective policy formulation and debate on a continental scale require access to comparable higher education data and reliable, common benchmarks and indicators, which are both politically relevant and methodologically sound.
The European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) is a European-level database providing a reference list of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Europe and data at the institutional level on HEIs’ activities and outputs, such as students, graduates, personnel and finances, complementary to educational statistics at the country and regional level provided by EUROSTAT .
As of Spring 2022, ETER included 41 countries in Europe and provided data from 2011 to 2019, with a total number of 3,436 observations.
The European Tertiary Education Register is a joint undertaking of five partners:
- USI – Università della Svizzera Italiana, Institute of Communication and Public Policy, Lugano, Switzerland
- JOANNEUM Research, POLICIES – Institute for Economic and Innovation Research, Graz, Austria
- Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna, Austria
- NIFU – Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Oslo, Norway
- The Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering Antonio Ruberti, Rome, Italy
– together with a network of experts in the concerned countries.
ETER is implemented together with a network of data providers in the National Statistical Authorities and National Education Ministries in the participating countries. While not part of the European Statistical System, ETER is largely compliant with statistical regulations and manuals, specifically with the UNESCO-UIS/OECD/EUROSTAT (UOE) data collection on formal education manual (UOE manual) and with the OECD Frascati Manual on research and experimental development (R&D) statistics.
ETER also closely cooperates with different institutions and projects, providing data and analyses on European Higher Education. The register is further embedded within the OECD Analytical Database of Higher Education Providers (ADHEP) project.
ETER has been developed through a series of contracts by the European Commission from 2014 onwards. The current contract with the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission (contract no. EAC-2021-0170) runs for three years from May 2021 to April 2024.