EUROSTUDENT

Following the outbreak of the war on Ukraine, Europe experienced a strong rise in inflation in 2022/23, which posed and partially continues to pose major challenges for companies, workers, consumers, and governments. Students were also affected by inflation. We take the recent inflation as an opportunity to take a long-term look back at how inflation has affected students in Europe.

This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of student well-being, taking into account both individual and study-related conditions and distinguishing between requirements and resources. Two data sources from the EUROSTUDENT 8 project are used: the aggregated data and the microdata. The aggregated data includes information from 22 countries within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), while the microdata includes information from 11 countries within the EHEA.

The Data and Methods Report is part of the documentation of the EUROSTUDENT 8 micro data (doi: 10.21249/DZHW:es8:1.0.0).

The EUROSTUDENT 8 – Synopsis of Indicators is the central publication of the eighth round of the EUROSTUDENT project and the result of the collaboration of a European-wide network including researchers, data collectors, representatives of national ministries, and other stakeholders. It comprises data from student surveys conducted in 25 countries in the EHEA. Adopting a broad, comparative perspective, the Synopsis of Indicators provides information on students’ socio-economic and study-related backgrounds, their study conditions and experiences, including international mobility, and their living conditions. It aims to inspire policy debates on the topic of the social dimension and lay the ground for further research.

Market, state, and the family of students are important sources of student funding. An empirical analysis for 25 countries in the European Higher Education Area reveals that in 80 % of countries, there is a pattern according to which students who depend on self-financing through the market reach the highest level of total monthly income. Their fellow students, who financially depend on their families, have a median income level and students who are mainly funded by the state have the lowest revenue. The significant differences in revenue between the three groups of students also involve financial problems of varying degrees.

The EUROSTUDENT project examines the social and economic situation of students based on student surveys in currently 25 countries. In the eighth project round (2021-2024), the collected student data was combined for the first time with a selection of indicators from the ETER project as part of a feasibility assessment. This allows for novel insights into the interplay of individual (micro-level), institutional (meso-level), and national (macro-level) characteristics. The seminar focuses on questions of social selectivity and study flexibility at different types of higher education institutions in countries of the European Higher Education Area.

The results of the eight round of the EUROSTUDENT project is going to include a set of indicators derived from a match of student survey data with institutional characteristics about students’ higher education institutions derived from the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER). The presentation gives a first preliminary insight on possible analytical perspectives.

Large financial inequality among students results in very different framework conditions for studying. For 27 countries of the EHEA, the extent of financial inequality among students was first determined using the Gini coefficient. There are differences ranging from 0.24 in Norway to 0.46 in Luxembourg. Various simple linear regressions suggest that two family-related variables (educational background, type of housing) increase the concentration of income, while national public student support significantly reduces it. A multiple regression shows, however, that only national public student exerts a very strong and highly significant effect and superimposes effects of social origin.