The share of people with higher education is higher in the Nordic and Baltic countries, and women are generally the most educated. Romania has the lowest percentage in the EU in terms of the number of people with higher education.
Romania has the lowest number of higher education graduates – Photo Archive
The available data show that the level of education varies considerably across Europe. Almost a third of people aged 25 to 74 in the European Union have a higher education degree, but this percentage differs by country. Eurostat classifies educational levels as low, medium and high, and in 2022, 31.8% of people aged 25 to 74 in the EU had a higher level of education, reports Euronews.
However, only 17.4% of Romanians had higher education in 2022, according to Eurostat. Ireland, on the other hand, has almost half of the population with higher education.
Specifically, in Romania 17.4% of adults between the ages of 25 and 74 had higher education, just over 60% had secondary education, and almost 22% did not even have high school education.
Educational levels are defined as low (less than high school), medium (high school), or high (university education).
The most educated Europeans
In the Nordic and Baltic countries, the percentage of higher education graduates was above the EU average. Sweden and Norway had more than 45% higher education graduates, and in Latvia the percentage was 44%. Other countries in the region also had higher than EU average percentages of higher education graduates.
In the UK, 43.5% of people aged 25 to 74 had a tertiary education, a higher percentage than those “big four” EU countries. France had the largest share of these at 38.2%, followed by Spain at 38%.
On the other hand, after Romania, Italy recorded the lowest share of higher education graduates, with only 18.5%. Germany also had a percentage slightly below the EU average of 31.5%.
In four EU countries, more than 40% of the inhabitants had only lower education. While the share of the population with higher education was significantly lower in the EU candidate countries. Turkey had by far the highest share of the population with a low level of education, where two-thirds (61.8%) had less than secondary education.
This figure was also below 40% in four EU countries, namely Portugal, Italy, Malta and Spain.
Hope comes from young adults
Eurostat data points out that the share of tertiary education graduates among young people in Europe is increasing significantly. In 2022, more than two fifths of the EU population aged 25 to 34 had a higher education degree, with notable variations between countries.
In 2022, 42% of the EU population aged 25-34 had a higher education degree. It varied from 24.7% in Romania to 62.3% in Ireland.
In the EU, the share of people aged between 25 and 74 with higher education has been growing. This has increased from 19.1% in 2004 to 31.8% in 2022.
Women, more educated than men
In the 35 European countries with available data, women aged 25-34 had a higher proportion of higher education graduates than men.
In 2022, the average for women with higher education was 47.6%, compared to 36.5% for men. The gender gap was more pronounced in the Nordic and Baltic countries, with the exception of Finland, where Iceland, Slovenia and Slovakia had the largest discrepancies. In contrast, Turkey, Switzerland and Germany recorded the smallest gender gap, indicating close proportions of female and male tertiary graduates.
In our country, 28.4% of women between the ages of 25 and 34 had university education, while only 21% of men in this age group had higher education.
Adult education
Lifelong learning is essential for updating skills and knowledge. According to Eurostat, it covers all forms of education and training, whether formal, non-formal or informal, with the aim of improving the skills of participants.
In 2022, 11.9% of 25-64 year olds in the EU participated in education or training activities in the last 4 weeks, ranging from 1.7% in Bulgaria to 36.2% in Sweden . Although adult learning was more widespread in the Nordic countries, the Balkan countries recorded lower proportions compared to the EU average.
In Romania, only 5.4% of adults participated in training courses, according to Eurostat data from 2022.
