Dissemination and Timelines
ETER provides aggregated data at individual Higher Education Institution (HEI) level, made available to the public via web-tables and visualisation outputs. Our web application enables users to download the ETERhttps://staging.eter-project.com/data-for-download-and- micro data and country level metadata. Only publicly available data can be accessed from this site. A few additional data (mostly concerning finances) are available only for research purposes. To access to these data, you need to register on this website and to accept a non-disclosure agreement.
Reference Period for Data Collection
In principle, ETER provides a yearly data collection – all data should be collected every year, including those data that generally are not expected to change in almost all cases (name of the HEI, foundation year, etc.). Depending on the nature of the data and the practices of data collection, individual data refer to slightly different periods, as detailed in a table below. Specific national departures from these practices should be detailed in the metadata. Departures from these standard reference periods are noted in the metadata.
| Variable | Reference period/date |
| Descriptors and geographical information | Last day of the calendar year (31st of December) |
| Expenditures | Calendar year (1st January – 31st of December) |
| Revenues | Calendar year (1st January – 31st of December) |
| Personnel | Calendar year based on person-years for FTEs. Last day of the calendar year for HC. |
| Students | End of the first month of begin of the academic year. |
| Degrees (including PhD degrees) | Academic year or calendar year (to be specified) |
| Age of students and graduates | First day of the year following the reference year for data collection (e.g. 01.01.2017 for 2016 data). |
It is important to note that these practices slightly differ from those adopted by EUROSTAT, as in EUROSTAT year ‘2012’ refers to the academic year 2011/2012 for students and graduates, whereas in ETER to the academic year 2012/2013. In both cases, the year ‘2012’ refers to the calendar year for finances, personnel and graduates.
Timelines for Release of Data
Data is returned to ETER in Q4 of the year – with one year delay – and ETER aims to release new data no later than end of Q1 the following year (31 March). Where there is a delay in releasing new data, this will be flagged on our website.
Due to the gap between the contracts, the most recent ETER data release included three years of data 2017, 2018 and 2019. This data is now available for download.
Two more rounds of data collection round is planned under current contract, for 2020 and 2021 return period. We expect to publish next round of data by 31 March 2023.