Social Monitor: Romania has the lowest higher education rate in EU

The Social Monitor, a project of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Romania, released a graph for the distribution of people according to the higher education rate in Romania compared to other EU states and at subnational level.   Romania has the lowest national higher education rate of EU27 states, according to official Eurostat data. Figures show that the situation is not better at subnational level: four out of eight regions in Romania ( South-Western Oltenia, North-East, South East and Southern Muntenia ) are part of the 11 EU regions with the lowest education levels.   The higher education rate in Romania in 2022 was 19.3%, against the European rate of 34.3%, which makes Romania the state with the lowest higher education rate in EU.   In comparison, other post-communist states have significantly higher education rates: Czechia and Croatia with 25%, Lithuania over 45%. The next country after Romania is Italy with 20.3% education rate. This very low education rate does not show the dramatic situation of education distribution in Romania at subnational level.   Romania has 8 regions NUTS2 (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) and four of those regions are among the lowest educated 11 NUTS2 regions in EU, in the competition with rural areas of other EU27 states.   South Muntenia is the region with the lowest education rate in EU, with only 13.7% of people who are college graduates. North-East and South-East regions are the next in the top of lowest education with only 14% of college graduates, while South Western Oltenia has an average of 17.6% of people who hare college graduates, which makes it the 231st regions in EU27 for the number of college graduates.   The top of the lowest educated 11 regions also includes Italy, Czechia and Croatia. The Buchares-Ilfov area is not only the most educated region in Romania but ranks among the first 50 EU regions for the number of higher education graduates with 42.2%.   First in the top are Sostines region in Lithuania, with 62.1%, Brabant area in Belgium with 60.7% and Stockholm area in Sweden with 57.5%. The higher education rate or the percentage of adult population with college education is considered one of the most important indicators for the social economic potential of a community. Specialists say this higher education rate is one of the most often used criteria to determine the level of economic investments and development in a region on an average and long term.   The fact that four out of the eight Romanian regions are among the last in this higherarchy shows that the development potential of those regions is low at the moment.   Data used were collected by Eurostat. They can be consulted on https://monitorulsocial.ro/data/populatia-dupa-nivelul-de-educatie-2/.