Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The proportion of non-EU citizens residing in the EU, aged 25-34, with a tertiary education (ISCED levels 5-8) increased by 12.5 percentage points, from 24.2% in 2014 to 36.7% in 2024. For citizens of other EU countries in the same age group, the proportion reached 41.1% in 2024, an increase of 7.4 percentage points since 2014 (33.7%). According to Eurostat, the European Statistical Office in Brussels.
Meanwhile, the proportion of citizens of the reporting EU member states with a tertiary education reached 45.1% last year, an increase of 8.3 percentage points since 2014 (36.8%). From a gender perspective, women aged 25-34 in the reporting country had the highest proportion of tertiary education at 51.2%, ahead of women from other EU and non-EU countries, at 45.9% and 40.5%, respectively.
This means that women from non-EU countries had a higher proportion of tertiary education than men from the reporting country (39.3%), who had the highest proportion among men. They were followed by men from other EU countries (36.2%) and men from non-EU countries (33.0%).
Across all three nationality categories, the gender gap was evident. The largest difference was between women and men from the reporting country (11.9 percentage points), compared to women from other EU countries (9.7 percentage points) and non-EU countries (7.5 percentage points).