SDG 4: Quality education

The sustainable development goal ‘quality education’ (SDG 4) seeks to ensure access to quality education for all throughout their lives, as well as to increase the number of young people and adults who have the relevant skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship.

One of the Eurostat indicators used to measure progress in SDG 4 is the tertiary education attainment rate, which measures the share of the population aged 25 to 34 that completed a higher education qualification. In 2024, the tertiary education attainment rate in the EU was 44.1%, indicating a significant increase from the 39.6% registered in 2019. This means that the EU is well on track to meet the European Education Area strategic framework 2030 target of raising the share to at least 45%.  

Among EU countries, in 2024, Ireland (65.2%), Luxembourg (63.8%) and Cyprus (60.1%) had the highest tertiary education attainment rates, while Romania (23.2%), Italy (31.6%) and Hungary (32.3%) had the lowest rates.

The gap between women and men in the EU was significant, with women registering a rate of 49.8% and men 38.6%. Young women outperformed men on tertiary educational attainment throughout the EU. The gap was the largest, above 20 percentage points, in Slovenia (55.7% for women vs 32.0% for men), Latvia (56.8% vs 33.9%), Estonia (53.9% vs 32.3%) and Croatia (50.1% vs 29.6%).

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Source dataset: sdg_04_20

For more information

• Publications on the sustainable development goals 
• Thematic section on the sustainable development goals 
• Database on sustainable development goals
• Recording of the webinar on the EU’s progress towards the SDGs
• Visualization tool SDG EU progress tracker
• Visualization tool SDGs & me
• Visualization tool SDG country overview
• UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Methodological note

Higher education in this article refers to the international standard classification of education (ISCED) levels 5 to 8 (short-cycle tertiary education; bachelor’s; master’s; and doctoral or equivalent level).

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