European Tertiary Education Register (ETER)

ETER is an EU-funded initiative that collects qualitative and quantitative data on higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe, including their basic characteristics, educational activities, staff, finances and research activities.

ETER now provides the number of external quality assurance procedures (excluding those with negative decisions) recorded in DEQAR for each reference year, distinguishing between institutional evaluation, program evaluation at different ISCED level, joint program evaluation and cross-border evaluation.

This cooperation will allow scholars and policy-makers to analyse more thoroughly the extent and forms of quality assurance in Europe and the way they differ (for a preliminary analysis see also EQAR Policy Brief https://www.eqar.eu/esg-coverage-of-higher-education-systems-in-europe/).

The unique feature of ETER is that it provides comparable data at the level of individual higher education institutions. It thus complements to educational statistics at the country and regional level, provided e.g. by EUROSTAT.

The Register of Public-Sector Organizations (OrgReg) is a project closely related to ETER, collecting and maintaining basic information on higher education institutions existing in Europe.

EQAR and ETER have cooperated closely since the inception and launch of DEQAR:

  • ETER is the most comprehensive, publicly available and freely usable reference list of officially recognised higher education institutions in Europe. In line with DEQAR’s lean approach, basic information on higher education institutions in DEQAR is thus taken from ETER and OrgReg. This data is updated periodically.
  • EQAR cooperated with ETER in a Policy Brief on the ESG Coverage of Higher Education Systems in Europe. The report draws on data from both ETER and DEQAR, allowing some unique analyses based on combining the two datasets.
  • ETER was a driving force together with EQAR in organising various discussions on interoperability of databases/systems in higher education and connecting existing systems of identifiers.
  • ETER is working on including more composite indicators on external quality assurance of higher education institutions, based on the data fetched from DEQAR automatically.