According to the chairman (Portuguese: bastonário) of the OE, only 30 to 50 percent of the candidates with an unaccredited degree pass the licensing exams, depending on the particular engineering field.

A full chartered engineer (Engenheiro) in Portugal used to have a compulsory five-year course known as licenciatura (licentiate) which was granted exclusively by universities.

In the mid-2000s those institutions adopted new more selective admission rules which were imposed to every Portuguese higher education institution by the State, excluding for the first time in their history the applicants with negative (less than 95/200) admission marks (in Portugal admission marks to higher education institutions are based on a combination of high school marks, and results of the entrance exams, and competition is based in a numerus clausus system).

This is the main reason many engineering courses awarded by several Portuguese polytechnic institutions and a few universities, are not currently accredited by Ordem dos Engenheiros.

Today, after many reforms and changes in higher education occurred since 1998 to the 2000s, the formal differences between polytechnic and university licenciatura degrees in engineering are in general null, and due to the Bologna process both graduates should be recognized equally all across Europe.