Public Funding Observatory

EUA’s Public Funding Observatory captures the very latest trends impacting Europe’s universities and offers the most up-to-date information on dozens of different higher education systems across the continent. The data is laid out in a series of reports and this interactive online tool, which is updated annually and currently contains data from 34 systems.

EUA has been following the evolution of public funding to universities since the 2008 financial crisis. The study reveals that since then, the divide between higher education systems that increase public funding, and those that reduce investment, is getting wider. It also shows that while 2012 was the most difficult year in terms of cuts, any recovery that can now be detected is slow and fragile.

The monitoring is conducted in close cooperation with EUA’s collective members, the national rectors’ conferences, which regularly provide extensive funding data from their countries and report on trends developing within their national higher education systems. This continuous feedback fuels up-to-date reports, and highlights the evolution of public funding for the university sector across Europe.

The PFO online tool was originally set up with the support of the EU Lifelong Learning Programme through the DEFINE project (2012-2015). This webpage reflects the views only of EUA, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.