Following the launch of the new institutional benchmarking tool, a dedicated training session was held on 17 December 2025 to help higher education institutions make the most of this powerful analytical resource. The training was designed for institutional leaders, strategic planning teams, quality assurance professionals, and anyone involved in institutional development and performance monitoring.

The institutional benchmarking tool represents a significant advancement in higher education data analytics, providing access to comprehensive data from approximately 3 500 European institutions. To ensure users can fully harness the tool's capabilities, this training session offered hands-on guidance through all key features and functionalities

Participants gained practical experience navigating the platform, understanding the underlying methodology, and interpreting the rich array of indicators available. Whether you are new to benchmarking or an experienced data analyst, this training equipped participants with the knowledge and skills needed to extract meaningful insights for your institution.

Content 

Understanding the tool's structure and data sources

The session began with an overview of the platform's architecture and the data sources that power it. Participants learned about the EHESO-ETER data collection, which forms the foundation of the tool, alongside external sources covering publications and patents. The training explained the scope of the dataset, including the approximately 3,500 participating institutions, and clarified which institutions are included based on data completeness criteria.

Attendees also discovered how the tool presents the most recent data from 2022, with time series information available in the expert view for longitudinal analysis and trend identification.

Navigating the two viewing modes

A key component of the training focused on the platform's two distinct interfaces. The 'at a glance' view provides quick, accessible overviews ideal for rapid assessments and executive summaries. Participants learned how to use this view to obtain snapshot comparisons and identify areas of strength or development opportunities at a glance.

The expert view offers deeper analytical capabilities, enabling detailed exploration of indicators, time series analysis, as well as customised comparisons. The training demonstrated how to navigate this more advanced interface, filter data, and create tailored analyses to support strategic decision-making.

Peer selection methodology

Understanding how peer institutions are identified is crucial for meaningful benchmarking. The training explained the sophisticated algorithm that calculates pairwise distances across eight key indicators: institutional age, size measured by academic staff, education intensity, master's degree orientation, PhD intensity, subject concentration, relative specialisation in STEM fields, and the presence of a university hospital.

Participants learned how the system normalises scores, adjusts distances for specialised institutions, and calculates Euclidian distances to identify the 15 most similar peer institutions for each organisation. This knowledge enables users to understand why specific peers have been selected and how to interpret comparisons in context.

Exploring the seven indicator categories

The training provided detailed guidance on interpreting and using each of the seven main indicator categories:

• Resources indicators examine human, financial and infrastructure capacity. Participants will learn to analyse metrics such as total academic personnel, senior staff ratios, and the share of revenues from core budgets to assess institutional capacity and resource allocation.
• Teaching and learning indicators measure educational activities and student outcomes. The training will demonstrate how to interpret graduate numbers across qualification levels, master's degree orientation, STEM graduate percentages, and dropout rates to evaluate educational performance.
• Research indicators assess research output and quality. Attendees will discover how to use metrics including PhD student ratios, publications per academic staff member, citation performance, and EU Framework Programme participation to benchmark research performance.
• Knowledge transfer measures evaluate engagement with industry. The session will cover how to analyse academic patent intensity, industry cooperation in EU projects, co-publications with industry partners, and income from continuous professional development.
• Regional engagement indicators capture collaboration and impact at the regional level. Participants will learn to interpret research revenues from regional sources and the share of graduates working in their study region.
• International orientation metrics assess globalisation. The training will explain how to use data on foreign academic staff ratios, mobile student percentages, international joint publications, and Erasmus+ programme participation to evaluate internationalisation efforts.
• Societal challenges indicators address broader social goals relevant for the European Education Area. Attendees will learn to analyse gender balance in staff and students, mature student ratios, and the intensity of publications in information and communications technology.
   

Practical applications and strategic insights

The training concluded with practical guidance on how to use the benchmarking tool for strategic planning, performance assessment, and peer learning. Participants exlored real-world scenarios and case examples demonstrating how institutions can identify areas for improvement, set realistic targets based on peer performance, and track progress over time.

Attendees left the session equipped with the knowledge and confidence to integrate the benchmarking tool into their institution's strategic planning processes and performance monitoring frameworks.
 

Practical information 

• Date: 17 December 2025
• Time: 13:00 p.m. - 14:30 a.m. (CET)
• Format: Online Event (MS Teams)
• Instructors: Frans Kaiser, Donatas Jodauga, Mantas Pupinis
• Slides