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The regional structure of European Higher Education.
ETER analytical report now available on-line.
Expanding the geographical coverage of higher education is an important means to achieve two key objectives of the European Union Agenda for Higher Education. On the one hand, a broader geographical coverage lowers costs and barriers for student’s access to higher education, particularly for pupils from lower social classes that are more penalized by the need to move to another region. On the other hand, higher education is an essential component of the formation of human capital, which is largely recognized as a major determinant of productivity and growth. Hence, establishing higher education institutions represents a major instrument for a more cohesive and balanced European development.
In this respect, ETER can be used to examine the contribution of different types of Higher Education Institutions and of satellite campuses to the regional distribution of higher education.
Results show that, in 2016, 59% of the NUTS 3 European regions, comprising 79% of the population and 75% of the surface of Europe, hosted at least one main seat of a Higher Education Institution.  Additionally, more than 250 NUTS 3 regions (out of 1,700), containing about 15% of the EU population, are served only by satellite campuses, showing how their creation is a powerful tool to improve accessibility to higher education. Non-university institutions also significantly raise the share of European regions offering higher education and substantially increase the density and diversity of supply in densely populated areas. This process took momentum from the 1970s onward, when the diffusion process of universities started to slow down. At the same time, the research function of higher education, as approximated by the number of PhD students, remains highly concentrated in large cities (see figure 1).
This report therefore shows how public policies mobilized different strategies to increase accessibility of higher education at the regional level, while keeping resources and research activities concentrated in the metropolitan areas. First, the creation of regional universities outside the main cities, then the establishment (or consolidation) of Universities of Applied Sciences, as regional hubs for education and, increasingly, societal and economic outreach. Finally, the establishment of satellite campuses as a way to provide education at the regional level, while sharing human resources and infrastructures over the whole institution.
Figure 1. Distribution of Higher Education activities by NUTS 3 region
The figure shows how the institutions and undergraduate students are moderately more concentrated spatially than the European population, while PhD students are much more concentrated.


Variables and methodological issues. The report covers EU-28 countries, EEA/EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland), candidate and potential candidate countries (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey) and refers to year 2016/2017. The analysis used NUTS 3 regions from EUROSTAT, which include population in the range 150.000- 800.000 and follow the administrative definition of “province” (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/background).
For each institution, ETER provides the following geographical information:
  • Information about the main seat, including the region, city and postcode, as well as geographical coordinates.
  • A dummy variable to distinguish multi-site institutions (i.e. institutions with satellite campuses in different NUTS 3 regions)
  • Information about region, city and postcode of the satellite campuses (if present).
For the purposes of analysis, geographical information is combined with the following variables.
  • information on the institutional type by distinguishing between Universities, Universities of Applied Sciences and other institutions.
  • Information about the legal status, distinguishing between public and private institutions (based on whether a public agency or a private entity has ultimate control over the institution).
  • Information on the the foundation year, i.e. the year in which the institution was established in its current form.
  • Statistical data on the number of students enrolled at the diploma, bachelor and master level (ISCED levels 5 to 7) and at the PhD level (ISCED level 8).
Data are available for the period 2011-2016; for our analysis, we use the most recent year, i.e. 2016, with the exception of France, for which we use data from 2014, and Denmark, for which we use data from 2013. Total number of HEIs in the dataset is 2,966. Additionally, data on population and area of NUTS 3 regions have been retrieved from EUROSTAT and refer to the year 2016.
A major limitation of ETER data is that data on the number of students, PhD students and staff cannot be disaggregated by campus. This implies that, for the purposes of this report, all these figures are attributed to the main campus (and to the respective region).
 
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The opinions expressed in this message are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission
Copyright © European Tertiary Education Register, Università della Svizzera italiana,  Lugano, Switzerland.

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