ENQA was recently invited to join the Advisory Board of the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER), a database that collects information on European higher education institutions. ETER provides data on the number of students, graduates, international doctorates, staff, fields of study, income, and expenditures, as well as descriptive information on the characteristics of the institutions. Currently, the register includes a core set of statistical data on 2,764 institutions in 36 countries, allowing for comparability. ETER is managed by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission, in collaboration with the Directorate General for Research and Innovation, EUROSTAT, and the National Statistical Authorities of the participating countries.
As ETER aims to be a joint resource for policy-makers, administrators, and scholars, most of the data can be freely downloaded from the project website and reused for analytical purposes. A small part of the data is available for research purposes only.