As stated by the renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education adopted by the European Commission in 2017 (COM(2017) 247 final), convenient access to higher education is an important asset for regional development and competitiveness. It can boost innovation and upgrade the skills of the labor force through education and lifelong learning. There is a social dimension to it too, as widespread access will allow more and more diverse students to attend university, including those who cannot afford to move to get a degree.
Thanks to its broad coverage of European higher education and good localization information, ETER provides the ground for an evidence-based analysis of the level of accessibility to higher education at regional level. To this aim, a study of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) combined ETER data with information on the European road network and with population data from EUROSTAT.
The study shows that, in the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) area an average of four out of five people live within a 45-minute drive of the main campus of at least one university. Nevertheless, in one out of five NUTS-3 regions the majority of the population cannot reach a university in 45 minutes. These regions together represent 14 % of the EU plus EFTA’s population. Most of the regions with low access to a university are located in eastern Member States (Figure 1). This might be mitigated by the presence in some of these regions of auxiliary campuses, which are not yet included in ETER. National policies for the expansion of higher education through the foundation of new universities and, in many countries, the establishment of an extensive college sector have therefore been effective in promoting regional access.
Universities can also play an important role in the social and economic functions provided by cities. By combining the information on universities’ locations and student numbers with the extent and the demographic characteristics of European cities, we can assess the importance of the student population in comparison with the residential population of the cities. On average, students enrolled at universities2 in cities represent more than 6 % of the cities' population. Higher shares are found especially in medium-sized cities. In 38 cities, the number of university students divided by the cities' population exceeds 20 %. Many of these cities (such as Bologna, Oxford, Kraków and Leuven) have hosted universities for several centuries.
|