This section of the handbook aims at supporting future students to do the first steps to start a career in railways by:

• giving an overview about currently existing rail related study courses in Europe and beyond (ASTONRail database),
• providing a collection of links where to find information about career perspectives and job profiles in the project partner countries.

A database on rail related study courses which did not exist so far has been developed in WG1 of In the ASTONRail project.

To develop the ASTONRail database data from multiple sources was collected. In the first step past research and research projects dealing with education in railways were investigated. Web research about rail-related courses and modules was the most reliable source in the first phase of data collection to validate older sources and to extend the research. The ASTONRail partners searched for rail-related study courses with different key words in university portals and in web portals presenting the curricula. The research was dedicated to rail-related courses and modules from EQF level 5 to 8 in the partner countries, in Europe and outside Europe. Out of the data collected in the first phase a list of universities that may offer rail-relevant study courses was developed. In the following, a preliminary database (excel sheet) was built by collecting data for each of the listed study courses from the university websites.

In the end, the preliminary database consisted of over 370 courses (full courses, short courses, modules of a wider course), from 190 different institutions.

To verify and to complete the data from the preliminary database a questionnaire was created in Google Forms and a survey was conducted. The questionnaire included three sections: the first one about the confirmation of the data in the preliminary database, the second about the basic course information and the third about the further information needed. The questionnaire was send to the universities and organisations by email with a request to check already available data and to complete the questionnaire. As a result, the final database (as of February 2021) was created.

The ASTONRail handbook gives higher education institutions or course providers the possibility to update the database by adding new courses or by revising existing courses to stay current.

In the ASTONRail database you can look for rail related study courses in several countries. The database is available here.

By 13th April 2023 54 course entries from 16 countries have been integrated into the database, resulting from the final analysis of February 2021.

The number of course entries per country is shown in figure 1.











Figure 1: Number of course entries per country



In which language the courses are taught is presented in figure 2.














Figure 2: Number of course entries per teaching language




To which EQF-levels the courses belong is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: EQF-levels of course entries

If you are looking for information on career perspectives and job profiles, the collection of links offers information on where you can find this in the ASTONRail project partner countries.