Higher education in Portugal

Students who hold a diploma of secondary education (12th grade) or the equivalent, who meet all legal requirements, particularly exams in specific subjects in which minimum marks must be obtained, may apply.

However, the Portuguese Ministry of Education announced a 2010 report published by its office for educational evaluation GAVE (Gabinete de Avaliação do Ministério da Educação) which criticized the results of PISA 2009 report and claimed that the average Portuguese teenage student had profound handicaps in terms of expression, communication and logic, as well as a low performance when asked to solve problems.

[8] In Portugal, university and college attendance before the 1960s, including for the period of Portuguese monarchy which ended in 1910, and for most of the Estado Novo regime (1920s – 1974), was very limited to the tiny elites, like members of the bourgeoisie and high ranked political and military authorities.

Overcrowded classrooms, obsolete curricula, unequal competition among institutions, frequent rule changing in the sector and increasingly higher tuition fees (inside the public higher education system, although much smaller than private institution fees[9]) that can be a financial burden for many students,[10] have been a reality until the present day, though some improvements have been made since the Bologna Process implementation in 2007/2008.

Public universities have full autonomy in the creation and delivery of degree programmes, which are to be registered at DGES – Direcção-Geral do Ensino Superior (State Agency for Higher Education).

[14] Universities are regulated by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and are represented as a whole by the CRUP – Conselho de Reitores das Universidades Portuguesas.

The fast expansion of the polytechnic institutes, whose entrance and teaching requirements before the mid-2000s were in general less demanding than the universities' criteria, was an administrative attempt to reduce the elevated rate of pre-higher education abandon and to increase the number of (under)graduates per one million inhabitants in Portugal which were dramatically below the European average (this does not imply that its students haven't become competent professionals).

The creation of degree programmes by public polytechnics require their prior approval from Government, through DGES – Direccção Geral do Ensino Superior (State Agency for Higher Education).

[14] Polytechnics are regulated by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, and are represented as a whole by the CCISP – Conselho Coordenador dos Institutos Superiores Politécnicos Portugueses.

Government replies defend the necessity of maintaining selective mechanisms to secure a minimum level of institution quality, rationalize the whole system, and protect educational standards.

Since the population was largely illiterate, the two universities at Coimbra and Évora, and some later higher-education schools in Lisbon (e.g. (Escola Politécnica: 1837-1911; Curso Superior de Letras: 1859-1911; and Curso Superior de Comércio: 1884–1911)) and Porto (successively Aula Náutica: 1762-1803; Real Academia da Marinha e Comércio: 1803-1837; and the Academia Politécnica: 1837–1911), were enough for a small population inside a territory like Continental Portugal of the 16th-19th centuries.

In addition, the private universities have faced a restrictive lack of collaboration with the major enterprises which, however, have developed fruitful relationships with many public higher education institutions.

Today, as in the past, they have full autonomy to offer all levels of academic degrees and the power to create new graduate or undergraduate courses in almost every major field of study.

The Prime Minister of the Kingdom, Fontes Pereira de Melo, was not satisfied with the excessive academism of both schools (Escola Politécnica (Polytechnic School) in Lisbon and the Academia Politécnica (Polytechnic Academy)), as he considered the institutions excessively theoretical for industrial labour force needs, as both were modelled on the only Portuguese university – the ancient University of Coimbra.

At the same time, the World Bank urged the Portuguese authorities to restrain enrolment quotas so as to make "better use" and rationalise the supply of higher education and improve the management of the system, namely in terms of accountability, coordination, and efficiency.

Subsequently, the government passed Decree-Law 397/77 of 17 September, which established a numerus clausus for every university programme and eliminated the threat to the new short vocational education programs – that without reducing the supply of engineering jobs, graduates of the technician training institutes would find employment too scarce.

The short-cycle polytechnical degrees were mainly aimed at training of intermediate technicians for industry and commerce but also for basic health and education, instead of academics (like biologists, chemists, economists, geographers, historians, lawyers, mathematicians, philosophers, physicians, physicists, et al.), engineers, lecturers, researchers and scientists that were already produced by Portuguese universities.

In 1974, the Industrial and Commercial Institutes of vocational education were transformed into higher learning Superior Institutes of Engineering and Accounting and Administration and initially integrated in the university subsector; although originally exclusively focused on providing short-cycle degrees, the need for a stronger polytechnic sector, and these schools' history and purpose, led them to be integrated in the polytechnic subsector in the late 1980s (Administrative Rule 389/88 of 25 October 1988 – Decreto-Lei n.º 389/88, de 25 de Outubro).

However, in the following decades the polytechnic institutions didn't assume their specific role as tertiary education vocational schools, which were created to award practical diplomas in more technical or basic fields.

[13][23] The Portuguese licenciatura was a longer undergraduate degree, which included a licensure for working in a particular profession and an accreditation by the respective professional orders – ordens profissionais.

However, in the 1990s and 2000s, a fast growth and proliferation of and state-run polytechnical institutions with lower educational standards and ambiguous academic integrity, was responsible for unnecessary and uneconomic allocation of resources with no adequate quality output in terms of both new highly qualified graduates and research.

On the other side, law, natural sciences and related fields (particularly medicine), and fine arts, are preferred courses of students from families with higher educational and cultural backgrounds.

for Engineer, used extensively (formal and colloquially)) Pós-Graduação or Especialização (Postgraduate degree) – no specific title Mestrado (Master's degree) – title: Mestre Doutorado (Doctorate) – used in front of holder's name: Doutor Agregação (Agrégation) – used in front of holder's name: Professor Doutor The Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior (Higher Education Accreditation and Evaluation Agency) was created in the late 2000s and started to work in the early 2010s.

In 2012, its first thorough accreditation and evaluation report concluded that 25% (or 107) of 420 (out of 3500) bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree programs offered in Portugal, did not comply with elemental quality and academic integrity standards and should be terminated.

[30] But some orders, as well as some other professional associations, only allow candidates possessing an accredited course to be admitted to examination but do not exempt them from this examination due to the large number of institutions offering degrees in the concerned field with very different teaching standards and curricula (e.g. Ordem dos Advogados for lawyers and the Ordem dos Técnicos Oficiais de Contas for accountants).

[33] The Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior (A3ES)[34] (Higher Education Accreditation and Evaluation Agency) was created in the late 2000s and started to work in the early 2010s.

In 2012, its first thorough accreditation and evaluation report to date concluded that 25% (or 107) of 420 (out of 3500) bachelor's, master's and doctorate degree programs offered in Portugal, did not comply with elemental quality and academic integrity standards and should be terminated.

Like in any other country in the world, this appears to be an injustice for thousands of others students admitted to more rigorous and selective institutions that will face the same competition in the labour market, where the graduation marks are often decisive.

Architecture, economics, a number of engineerings, dentistry, law, pharmacy, or veterinary medicine at most public universities, are, in general, another examples of courses which are traditionally the most selective or popular.

[47] Despite their generally high reputation, economics, law and architecture degrees, even from some of the most selective and prestigious schools, have had an increasingly low employability rate due to an excessive number of new graduates each year.