Data Sources

This portal includes only countries for which reliable national statistical data is available and accessible online. In most cases the data is provided in the national or regional languages(s) which required us to have a national contact to help with translations as well as to deal with the different definitions and particularities of the field in each country.

The methodologies for data collection, analysis and reporting are documented on the website of the organizations consulted. Note that they vary from country to country and from organization to organization. The most important definitions are provided with the statistics as footnotes. The footnotes are an essential part of the data which cannot be interpreted or compared without them.

The source of the statistics for the countries included in this portal are:

The data provided by these sources are public-domain except in the UK, where HESA sells its reports. For the list of institutions, several sources were consulted in each country, including national Informatics organizations, education and research bodies, university websites and national personal contacts.

This portal includes statistics not only from traditional “Research Universities” (abbreviated as RU) but also from “Universities of Applied Sciences” (abbreviated as UAS): Fachhochschulen (Austria, Germany and Switzerland), Hautes Écoles (Belgium French community), Hogescholen (Belgium Flemish community and The Netherlands), Колежи (Bulgaria), Rakenduskõrgkoolid (Estonia), Ammattikorkeakoulujen (Finland), Professionshøjskolerne (Denmark), Institutes of Technology (Ireland), Kolegija (Lithuania), Høyskoler (Norway), Politécnico (Portugal). These institutions, known by different names in different countries (a common English translation is virtually impossible) have a common profile, they do offer profession- (or vocation-) oriented higher education studies. In a few countries only at Bachelor's level, but in most, studies at Bachelor's and Master's level. Excluding Ireland and Norway, where Institutes of Technology and Høyskoler perform research and do offer PhD studies in Informatics, in all the other countries mentioned in the portal, UAS do not offer PhD studies and in general do not perform scientific research. In Estonia, most Universities of Applied Sciences are part of Research Universities and have common professors and teaching staff. It is important to note that in the UK, “polytechnics”, formerly the equivalent of Universities of Applied Sciences, no longer exist as a separate category, having as a result of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 been either turned into universities or incorporated into existing ones.

For academic salaries, reported at the level of PhD Candidate, Postdoctoral Researcher and several Professor ranks, the present numbers are based on data from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In most of these countries information on the base gross salaries paid to academic positions is publicly available and reported by higher education and research ministries, academics associations, unions, or directly by the universities (shown in the relevant references). The only four exceptions are Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In Czech Republic and Latvia, the salary data was collected by directly interviewing representatives of a number of selected relevant institutions. In Lithuania, the numbers for professor salaries were taken from the polling conducted by a local news agency among state Lithuanian Universities. In Estonia, the data was provided by all institutions offering Informatics higher education studies in the country. We show salaries for academic positions at traditional Research Universities, salaries paid at Universities of Applied Sciences were not considered, except for Estonia where teaching positions and employment conditions are exactly the same in both kind of institutions.

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