Increasing the share of 30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary level education attainment was one of the specific objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. The EU agreed a benchmark average of at least 40%.
The indicator is defined as the percentage of the population aged 30 to 34 who have successfully completed tertiary level education. Tertiary level education programmes are those classified to ISCED 5-8. The EU has set a new target for increasing tertiary level educational attainment for the 2020 policy cycle based on a different age group.
30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment (%)
Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (LFS).
Key points
In 2020, 41% of those aged 30 to 34 in the EU had attained tertiary level. The EU met its 2020 target of an average of 40%. The highest levels of tertiary education attainment were in Luxembourg, Cyprus, Lithuania, Ireland and Sweden (more than 50% in 2020). By contrast, in Romania and Italy, fewer than 30% of 30- to 34-year-olds had a tertiary level attainment. Several countries have national targets. By 2020, 12 countries had reached their national target (Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia).
The share of 30- to 34-year-olds with high-level education increased, from 37.3% in 2015 to 41% in 2020 in the EU. Progress occurred in many Member States (the largest rises were in Slovakia, Malta and Luxembourg). Drops were reported in Hungary and Estonia, where the share of 30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment fell by around one percentage point over the same period. Due to breaks in time series, data for Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland Netherlands and Sweden cannot be reliably compared with those for 2015.
Among non-EU countries, in 2018, the share of 30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment was highest in Switzerland (56.4%), followed by Norway (51.5%) and Iceland 46.0%). Lower values were in Serbia (33.0%) and Turkey (331%). The highest increase among non-EU countries between 2015 and 2020 was in North Macedonia (+11.1 percentage points).
Table 22. 30- to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment (%)
Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (LFS). Notes: (b) ‘break in time series’; (p) ‘provisional’; (T): not defined; data are not presented when they are not available and/or do not support sufficiently reliable comparisons across countries or over time.
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