The European Tertiary Education Register, the reference dataset on European Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) is the reference dataset on European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). ETER provides data on nearly 3,500 HEIs in about 40 European countries, including descriptive information, geographical information, students and graduates (with various breakdowns), revenues and expenditures, personnel, and research activities; as of March 2023, data cover the years from 2011–2020. ETER complies with OECD-UNESCO-EUROSTAT standards for educational statistics; most data are collected from National Statistical Authorities (NSAs) or ministries of participating countries and are subject to extensive checks and harmonization. The development of ETER has been funded by the European Commission and is part of the current efforts to establish a European Higher Education Sector Observatory; it is closely connected to the establishment of a broader data infrastructure in the field of science and innovation studies (RISIS). The ETER dataset is widely used in the scholarly literature on higher education and science policy, as well as for policy reports and analyses.