Partner Institutions , Networks and Projects

Besides the network of national partners in each participant country, ETER works in close cooperation with several external bodies and communities, to ensure the comparability of data at European level, interoperability with other datasets, and to extend ETER dataset with data related to additional variables and indictactors, not available from national authorities.

Erasmus+ Programme

Erasmus+ is the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. This includes supporting student and higher education personnel mobility between partner countries.
 

Thanks to cooperation with ERASMUS+, ETER is able to provide institutional-level data on student and staff mobilities supported by Erasmus+. ETER also includes ERASMUS Charter codes to allow for data interoperability.

European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR) and Database of Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR)

The Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR) project was selected for EU co-funding under Erasmus+ Key Action 3 – European Forward-Looking Cooperation Projects. The main aim of the DEQAR project was the development of a database that would enhance access to reports and decisions on higher education institutions/programmes externally reviewed against the ESG, by an EQAR-registered agency.

DEQAR database is fully matched with ETER identifiers allowing for combining easily the two databases; from March 2022, ETER also includes summary indicators on quality assurance derived from DEQAR. The two initiatives are also cooperating in outreach and dissemination, including also combined analyses of data.

EUROSTUDENT

The EUROSTUDENT project collects and analyses comparable data on the social dimension of European higher education. A wide range of topics related to students’ social and economic conditions are covered. The project strives to provide reliable and insightful cross-country comparisons. It does this through coupling a central coordination approach with a strong network of national partners in each participating country.

It is currently envisaged to provide categorizations of HEIs to be included in EUROSTUDENT and EUROGRADUATES data to allow for the analysis of the impact of HEI’s institutional characteristics on student and graduate careers.

European University Association (EUA)

The European University Association represents more than 850 universities and national rectors’ conferences in 48 European countries.

EUA is a major partner of ETER for disseminating ETER results to European universities and to leverage on ETER data for analytical purposes concerning for example university funding in Europe.

Eurydice

ETER and Eurydice provide complementary views on European higher education, one focused more on quantitative data, respectively on the description of policies and institutional structures. This complementarity is exploited in the ETER country reports, which provide quantitative data to flesh out the Eurydice system’s description.

International University Associaton (IAU) and World Higher Education Database (WHED)

WHED is the most extensive database of international higher education worldwide. To foster cooperation, ETER now includes WHED identifiers.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Cooperation with OECD is developed mainly in two areas: on the one hand, the OECD-led ADHEP project aims at constructing a database similar to ETER for most OECD countries building on ETER for main design choices and data on European countries. On the other hand, close collaboration is established with the INES working group on higher education indicators in the area of academic staff.

Research Infrastructure for Science and Innovation Policy Studies (RISIS)

RISIS is a EU-funded research infrastructure on research and innovation policies, which provides also data on the research and technology output of HEIs. These data are provided through the RISIS-managed Orgreg facility, a large register of public-research organizations, which shares identifiers and descriptive information with ETER. Close cooperation is also established in dissemination activities, specifically within the RISIS Research Seminars series.

U-Multirank

U-Multirank is a companion project funded by the European Commission to establish transparency in higher education. The two initiatives are closely cooperating concerning definitions, development of indicators and quality assurance of data. Further cooperation will be established within the European University Observatory launched by the EC.