Political Instability, Austerity and Wishful Thinking: Analysing Stakeholders' Perceptions of Higher Education's Funding Reforms in Portugal

Overview & Synopsis

In the last decades, European higher education systems have been experiencing an unprecedented expansion, which created significant financial and political challenges. At the same time, we have seen a shift in attitudes towards public higher education that has promoted new ways of funding this sector. This context has led to major changes in the funding of public higher education, namely through the promotion of greater efficiency in the use of public resources and greater diversification of revenues of public higher education institutions. This article analyses funding reforms in Portuguese higher education and discusses their aims vis-à-vis the actual changes in funding sources and modes of funding. The analysis is based in the perceptions of several major stakeholders (collected through semi-structured interviews) about the effects of funding reforms.