Portuguese PM announces funding top-up for higher education

Prime Minister António Costa on Thursday announced a raft of measures to support higher education students, including a €25 million boost for institutions, and a 10% increase in the number of available scholarships.

Costa announced the measures at the opening of a session dedicated to World Science Day at the Thalia Theatre in Lisbon.

“There will be an extraordinary reinforcement of the higher education institutions in the total of €25 million,” said Costa, following the speech of  Science and Higher Education Minister Elvira Fortunato’s speech.

In his speech, the prime minister also highlighted the importance of supporting higher education in times when “the world, Europe and Portugal face a serious inflationary phase”. “It affects the functioning of the institutions, the ability of families to keep their children studying and of the children themselves to keep studying,” he added.

On top of the €25 million top-up for higher education meant to help institutions cope with energy costs, “there will also be an extraordinary reinforcement of the increase of all scholarships by 10%” as well a five percentage point increase in scholarships handed out to displaced students.

“And there is a 50% increase for Erasmus scholarships. We want to create better conditions so that more students can continue studying and so that higher education institutions can continue to do their work of training human resources and research,” he added.

In terms of governmental action, Costa presented the goal of investing 3% of the country’s GDP into research and development by 2030, with two-thirds of the funding coming from the private sector and the remaining third from the public sector.

Other goals for  2030 include increasing higher education participation to 60% among 20-year-olds while ensuring “the more ambitious goal” of having “50% of the population between 30 and 34 years” complete higher education.

In his speech, the prime minister also referred to “the decisive issue of student accommodation”, announcing a 78% increase in student beds from 15,073 to 26,868 between 2021 and 2026.

“This is one of the most ambitious programmes of the Recovery and Resilience Programme (RRP),” he said.

For now, the government had to reinforce the €375 million made available in the RRP with funds from the state budget, given the “high need and a very strong initiative capacity.”

(Pedro Morais Fonseca | Lusa.pt)

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