1.
Portugal has too many universities and polytechnics! This assertion is commonly
heard, even among academics but this does not appear to hold if a fair
comparison is made with other European countries. A different point is whether
the public budget should finance 15 universities and 15 polytechnics, all
assumed “equal”, with similar governing structures and allowed to offer all
degrees in all fields.
2.
The slow growth. In terms of the number of students enrolled, the Portuguese higher
education (HE) system is likely to grow only very slowly in the next few years.
After an exponential growth for most of the 20th century, it came to a sudden
stop by the year 2000.
a. The number of students
transferring directly from secondary school to HE may grow very slowly from the
balance of two opposing factors, the slow widening of participation and the
demographic decline.
b. The number of
non-traditional students may still grow considerably, when compared with other
European countries.
3.
Uncertainty of external factors. It is not possible to anticipate the effect on demand of HE of recent
events, namely,
a. The economic downturn that
implied a very large decline of the disposable income of the families;
b. The “scandals” coming to
light in the press in the last few years related to degrees obtained with very
little apparent effort.
4.
The need for a quota system. The sustainability of HE institutions located outside the more densely
populated areas depends on the quota system in place since 1976 but this means
a considerable cost for the families. Many aspiring students from Lisbon and
Porto are forced to decide between paying the cost of moving to another
location and the relatively high fees of local private institutions.
5.
The space for the private sector. The private HE institutions depend on
non-traditional students and on the mismatch between supply and demand of HE in
Lisbon and Porto. Among non-government institutions, only a few degree programs
in the Catholic University and in some specialized HE institutions appear to be
a first choice for students in their particular areas. The correction by the
year 2000 was painful but most institutions appear to have adapted. However,
new mergers and acquisitions may occur.
6.
Need for further differentiation. The public understanding of HE is very
unclear about the differentiation between universities and polytechnics and the
transfer between the two subsystems is common and, surprisingly, no special
preparation is normally required for transferring students. There is a marked
difference between the seven larger universities and the other eight that have
more difficulty in attracting students and have to deal with smaller and more
heterogeneous courses. There is a visible difference between these two groups
in their ability to attract competitive research funding. In their struggle to
survive by attracting new students to newly designed degree programs, they are
left with the permanent cost of the staff associated with the closed programs.
Similar comments might be made about polytechnics and the marked difference
between the 3 or 4 larger ones and the other 11 or 12. This mismatch between
staff and degree demand may require some sort of regional regulation of 1st
cycle degree offer or agreements that may run up to fusions.
7.
Clarification of the role of polytechnics. Successive governments
(in the last 30 years) found it impossible to clarify the mission of the
polytechnic HE and no public policies were ever set up to facilitate the
development of a differentiated culture. The statutory differences in the
description of the aims of their teaching are difficult to perceive and still
more difficult to understand when the scientific areas pursued in universities
and polytechnics are compared. Both are required to do research, applied
(orientada) research in the case of the polytechnics. This was not taken
seriously by public funding agencies that never created differentiated
programs. Polytechnics academic staffs were required in 2009 to hold a PhD and
this poses a new urgency in this clarification. The minute difference between
the cost per student in (government) universities and in polytechnics is due to
the relative seniority of staff and may converge in the future under current
regulations. The cost of CET (Cursos de Especialização Tecnológica) appears to
be much higher as they depend on the same type of staff as HE and require
larger contact time.
8.
Cost reduction. The HE costs per student have been under pressure for a number of
years and this implied a reduction of the ratio of academic staff to student
and a reduction of the contact time of students (with teaching staff). It is
hard to imagine that this trend had no effect on the learning outcomes. Further
cuts, as announced now, must be feared to have major effects on quality.
Teaching hours of academic staff are already much higher than typical research
universities worldwide. The alternative of replacing academic staff by
temporary non tenured staff would have the effect of ageing fast an already
aged academic staff. The only real alternative to government finance is an
increase in fees that are already high in European benchmarking (but for
England) and would create further stress to families and risk the exclusion of
many students.
9.
Research performance. The research performance of Portuguese universities grew at the
fastest rate of all OECD in the last decade but this risks being wasted as the
new PhDs (more than 1500 each year and many from recent promotions) have no
hope of finding a job. The alternative most are taking is expatriation. In the
short term, this may be seen as an increased mobility of researchers but it may
become a permanent fixture. The tenured research community is still growing as
the teaching staff of the polytechnics completes their PhD and it is not clear
how a contracting research budget will deal with this growth. Should funds be
allocated to the (internationally) more competitive research groups or should
nationally relevant work be also funded? Should research funding induce a
differentiation of the mission of universities and polytechnics? Should the
label of “University” be kept by all institutions thus created or should it be
tested against a set of criteria?
10.
Evaluation of outcomes. Quality of the HE outcomes may have suffered from the deregulation
started in the 1970s followed by the creation of a large and clearly uneven
private sector in the 1980s and a ferocious competition for students from 2000
onwards among institutions, private and public, while the impact of the A3ES is
not yet felt. The prestige of HE would benefit from the public understanding
that being a student means hard work for all and that cases coming to light of
very light criteria for the assessment of prior learning are not permitted.
11.
The role of open HE. The Open University never attracted a number of students comparable to
that of Spanish open universities and all residential universities struggle to
be seen offering some sort of distance education. With ominous signs that
Massive Open Online Courses are there to stay, this may need a deep rethinking.
José Ferreira Gomes, Universidade do Porto, Presented
at Conselho Nacional de Educação,
Higher Education Commission, 18 Oct 12, in CRUP-EUA Foresight Initiative [Publicado
em https://www.fc.up.pt/pessoas/jfgomes/politicaEnsinoSuperior.html]
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