I need data on:

For countries:  Russia, Poland, Czech, Romania, France, UK, Italy,
Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria:

For most recent year available

1. Total number of universities, polytechnic institutes, colleges
(broken down by type is good, but can be a grand total of all three
categories)

2. Total number of students enrolled at universities, polytechnic
institutes and colleges combined

3. Total number of academic faculty (professors and assistant professors combined)

4. R&D - total number of researchers by:  grand total, public
sector/govt/not profit, business/private sector, university

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 08 Jan 2006 14:17 PST

andre6377-ga,

It's turned out to be surprisingly difficult to come up with the
statistics you asked for.

Some very good country-by-country descriptions are available, but: (1)
they are available for most, but not all, countries on your list, and
(2) they are not necessarily in the same format for each country.

For instance, here's an excerpt from Poland:

=====
In Poland there are 249 schools of higher education, which operate on
the basis of the Act Schools of Higher Education (including 151
non-state ones).

State higher education institutions are situated in all large cities
in Poland. Some of these cities such as Cracow or Warsaw have long
academic traditions and have created a highly valued academic
community. The following types of higher education institutions may be
distinguished in the Polish system (including non-state institutions):

Universities uniwersytet 
technical universities politechnika 
agricultural schools (akademia rolnicza), 
schools of economics, 
teacher education schools (uczelnia pedagogiczna), 
medical academies (akademia medyczna), 
maritime schools, 
academies of physical education, 
schools of arts uczelnia artystyczna 
schools of theology, 
non- state schools of higher education. 
The highest number of students is enrolled in universities. In the
academic year 2003/04 there were around 539.6 thousand students
enrolled (including KUL ? the Catholic University of Lublin),
including nearly 282.3 thousand students in day courses.

In state technical universities - around 331.7 thousand, in
agricultural schools ? around 102.1 thousand, in teacher education
schools - around 91.9 thousand.

Other types of schools have the following enrolment: the schools of
economics - around 76.6 thousand students enrolled, medical academies
(40.9 thousand), academies of physical education (24.8 thousand),
schools of arts (13.2 thousand), maritime schools (12.1 thousand),
schools of theology (9.1 thousand). The non-state schools of higher
education cater for 524.5 thousand of students.
=====


Comparable statistics for all of your countries (and for all countries
in the world) ARE available for enrollments in higher education, and
for many other demographics (% of population with some level of higher
education, total expenditures on higher education, and so on).  But
the statistics available are different from those you asked for.

Let me know your thoughts as to whether any of this would be valuable
for your needs, or if you can only make use of the precise stats you
asked for.

Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by andre6377-ga on 08 Jan 2006 23:16 PST

First, thank you for taking the interest and time to answer my
question.  Second, yes, it has been difficult to find the supporting
data.

I know that the education systems differ by country - in some
countries a "college" is more akin to that of technical training
school in the USA.  I more interested in universities and polytechnic
institutes.  If you can find the numbers for each in the coutnries
requested - that would be a a great start.

I can amend / footnote the information on enrollment - in cases where
you have a gross number of students at "higher education levels" that
would be fine - that might include numbers for training institutes,
"pseudo-colleges" and the like, but that's okay.

Total number of faculty is quite important:  to clariy - I'm looking
for the total number of full time and part time academic faculty which
consists of: professors, assistant professors, teaching assistants) -
again a gross number that combines all three is sufficient.

I found Italy to be tough, mostly because I could not get web sites
with English.  The information on Eastern European countries tends to
be more sweeping and inconsistent across different web sites - but I
understand that such discrepancies occur in emerging markets.

The more important issue for me is to get an overall, good read - I'm
not looking for precise numbers - I understand that there is a lot of
play in the numbers reported.

I hope this clarifies your concerns.  Please do not hesitate to
contact me if you need anything else.

Regards,