Unlike the US, where the Carnegie classification provides a clear understanding of the main types of institutions in the system, there is currently no widely accepted classification of European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The diversity of national terms and labels, such as colleges, Fachhochschulen, or technical universities and the successive expansion of higher education beyond traditional (PhD-awarding) universities make it increasingly challenging to identify which main types of institutions are present in European higher education. Even more so since what constitutes the defining characteristics of a 'university' or a 'college' differs across countries.

The European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) provides for the first time a register and comparable data on a population of more than 3,000 HEIs in nearly 40 countries. On this basis and thanks to the integration of ETER with research and technology output data from the RISIS research infrastructure project, a comparable classification of European HEIs has been developed by Professor Benedetto Lepori from the Università della Swizzera italiana. The classification comprises six classes of HEIs showing distinct characteristics in terms of the relative orientation towards research vs education and of the subject specialisation towards NATural SCIences vs Social Sciences and Humanities (see figure below).