Definition: share of the population aged 25-34 with a tertiary education degree. This education level corresponds to the levels 5-8 of the 2011 ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) for data from 2014 onwards and to the levels 5-6 of the 1997 ISCED for data up to 2013. The data come from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). Statistics Belgium organises this EU-harmonised survey in Belgium and makes the results available, in particular to Eurostat. The survey methodology was reviewed in 2017. Comparison of the 2017 data with previous years should be done with caution. The data used here come from Eurostat, which publishes detailed and comparable results between EU Member States. Since these data are based on surveys, a margin of uncertainty must be taken into account. This margin of uncertainty increases as the indicator is calculated on smaller sub-populations. The confidence intervals for these data are available on request from Statistics Belgium.

Goal: 45% of people aged 25-34 have completed tertiary education.

The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs adopted by the UN in 2015 include target 4.3: “By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.”

The Council of the European Union (2021) set a target in the Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030) of 45% of people aged 25-34 having completed tertiary education by 2030.

Under the European Pillar of Social Rights, Belgium has set a target of 50.1% in tertiary education among 30- to 34-year-olds by 2030 (European Commission, 2022; Federal Public Service Social Security, 2023). This target applies to a different age group and is not used for evaluation.

International comparison: Belgium has more tertiary education graduates (51.4%) than the average of EU27 Member States (42%) in the age group considered, but this difference decreases from 14.5 percentage points in 2002 to 9.4 percentage points in 2022, although this figure was at its lowest at 6.6% in 2015 and has been rising again since then. The number of people with tertiary education is thus increasing faster in the EU27 over the entire period. When Member States are divided into three groups, Belgium is part of the group with the best performance in 2022 and performs better than the European average. In that year, Ireland ranked first with 62.3% and Romania last with 24.7%.

UN indicator: the selected indicator does not correspond to any monitoring indicator for the SDGs but is related to target 4.3., since the share of tertiary education graduates illustrates the access to affordable and quality education.

Sources

• General

  • SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals: United Nations (2015), Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015, document A/RES/70/1.

  • Indicators: United Nations (2017), Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, document A/RES/71/313.

  • UN Sustainable Development: https://sdgs.un.org/ (consulted on 18/01/2023).

  • UN Sustainable Development Goal indicators website: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/ (consulted on 18/01/2023).

• Specific

  • Council of the European Union (2021), Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030), p. 15, Official Journal of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu, 2021/C 66/01 (consulted on 22/11/2022).

  • European Commission (2022), The European Pillar of Social Rights: state of play on the national target for 2030, https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=89&furtherNews=yes&newsId=10299 (consulted on 23/11/2023).

  • Federal Public Service Social Security (2023), The evolution of the social situation and social protection in Belgium 2021, https://socialsecurity.belgium.be/sites/default/files/content/docs/en/publications/silc/silc-analysis-social-situation-and-protection-belgium-2021-en.pdf (consulted on 23/11/2023).

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