What ETER tells us about the regional dimension of European higher education (ETER brief 4)

This policy brief highlights the potential of ETER data to study the regional distribution of HEIs and their contribution to regional development. The main highlights are:

  • The regions with a large number of HEIs are large metropolitan areas (in particular capital cities) and university towns.
  • On average, a student can find a HEI by travelling less than 50 km.
  • Several areas in the south and east of Europe, in the north of UK and in parts of France of Germany have a low spatial density of HEIs.
  • PhD‐awarding HEIs are more concentrated in large cities.