The second edition of the European Tertiary Education is the only Europe-wide compilation of comparable data

The second edition of the European Tertiary Education is the only Europe-wide compilation of comparable data about individual higher education institutions, covering more than 2,200 universities and colleges in Europe
ETER data for 2012 can now be downloaded from this website. Under analytical results, it is also possible to download selected results and charts from ETER.
ETER (European Tertiary Education Register) is a project promoted by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission, in cooperation with the Directorate General for Research and Innovation and EUROSTAT (see poster here and a general presentation of ETER here). The purpose is to build a register of higher education institutions in Europe, providing data on the number of students, graduates, international doctorates, staff, fields of education, income and expenditure as well as descriptive information on their characteristics. You can download some examples of analyses which can be done from ETER here and a guidance on how to use the data here.

The Register builds on the results and experience of the EUMIDA (EUropean MIcroDAta collection) study and has the following goals:

• Develop a more complete set of indicators and characterize HEIs according to their main activities.
• Extend the coverage of the EUMIDA dataset to cover all European HEIs (with the exception of some small institutions).
• Collect data for 2011 and 2012, validate them and make them publicly available.
• Produce a methodological Handbook, as the basis for a regular data collection on European HEIs.

This website provides access to data collected for the year 2011 (respectively the academic year 2011/2012) and 2012 (academic year 2012/2013). ETER is not a ranking of European Higher Education and thus does not aim directly to compare HEIs. Rather, it provides a register of European Higher Education, as well as a core set of data on their characteristics, resources and outputs.