Facts and figures

Estonia has a strong educational system with a high level of secondary and higher education attainment¹. There are fees for bachelor and master degree studies, with scholarships available for international students². Doctorate studies are tuition free at public universities; private institutions often offer fee waivers². 11% of researchers and 29% of PhD students are international³, a threefold increase since 2008⁴.  

The University of Tartu is the largest university in Estonia, and one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe². Tallinn University of Technology is Estonia’s only University of Technology. The Estonian University of Life Sciences in Tartu is renowned for agriculture and forestry². 

Estonia is a digital society, reflected also in R&D with a focus on smart specialization and automatization⁴, and the use of big data to create solutions for real life situations, such as climate change and personalized medicine².

R&D expenditure was 1.6% of GDP in 2019, an increase of 14.3% on 2018⁵. Expenditure on R&D was around 453 million Euros in 2019, an increase of almost 24%⁵. Researchers in Estonia are also successful in securing funding from international sources, e.g. through Horizon 2020 projects⁴. Investment, and participation in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), are central parts of the Estonian Research Infrastructure Roadmap 2019 which includes the European Life-sciences Infrastructure for Biological information (ELIXIR)⁶.