Statistics Austria provides data each semester about students and courses of studies taken at Austrian higher education institutions (public and private universities, theological schools, universities of applied sciences and university colleges of teacher education) as well as data about the origin of students and their parents educational attainment. The legal basis is provided by the Federal Act on Documentation in Education (Bildungsdokumentationsgesetz 2020) and the Regulation on the Statistics of Universities and Higher Education Institutions and on Education Documentation (UHSBV).
The main sources of data are the registers of the higher education institutions and data from the primary statistical survey at the beginning of studies (UHStat1). The key figures are the number of students and courses of studies taken at Austrian higher education institutions.