HIGHER EDUCATION IN PORTUGAL BETWEEN 1995-2015 AND POSSIBLE FUTURES

One of the most visible and striking changes in contemporary Portugal is certainly what has been happening in education, namely in higher education. In this communication, based on the official data, the authors analyze the course of higher education in Portugal, regarding the expansion and diversification of the supply and demand of higher education as well as the public and the private financing of this level of education. From the analysis of official data, the authors show that for decades there was an explosive demand for this level of education accompanied by a public offer and adjusted private offer, with a slowdown and decrease in demand from 2008 due mainly to the economic and financial crisis of the country between 2008 and 2015. The authors show that this fall in the demand for higher education happens at the same time that the public investment in this level of education decreases and that the living conditions of the students worsen, denouncing a process of elitization of higher education in Portugal. To know the living conditions of the students, the authors had questioned about the social and economic origin of the student population as well as the costs that students are forced to carry out to study costs associated to the enrollment and attendance of higher education and living costs by applying a questionnaire to a representative sample of public and private Portuguese higher education students which has been applied already for 4 times: 1994/95, 2005/06, 2010/11, 2015/16. The homologous data collected in the four editions of the questionnaire application are compared, aiming a better understanding of the dimension of the process of democratization of higher education in the country. From the analysis of the data coming from the 4 studies, it was concluded that higher education in Portugal, instead of democratizing and universalizing, seems to become increasingly a teaching for the elites. The authors finish the analysis by presenting some educational policy measures that appear to be indispensable for building a more just and equitable higher education in the country.