Portugal with fewer foreign university students in 2020-2021
The covid-19 pandemic affected the mobility of foreign university students to Portugal, dropping the number of these students in the previous academic year, concludes a study promoted by Portugal universities, an initiative that brings together 16 institutions.
According to the study released today, the academic year 2020-2021 had 58,960 foreign students, 6,236 less compared to 2019-2020.
This was due to “acts of pandemic, with the limited reduction in mobility students”, referred in a communiqué to Universidades Portugal, an international promotion initiative of the 16 higher education institutions that are part of the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities (CRUP).
Compared to the 2014-2015 school year, in 2020-2021 there was a 32% drop in the number of mobile students, once again due to “the impacts of the pandemic”, but there are “signs of recovery” in the current school year, ticks the same grade.
The study focuses on the representation of foreign students in higher education in Portugal, data from the academic year 2020-2021 as the most current.
According to data collected by the 16 institutions, the University of Évora (20%), the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (19.4%) and the University of Algarve (19.0%) were the teaching requirements that concentrated the most foreign students in 2020 -2021, with Brazil (33%) and Cape Verde (10%) leading the list of countries of origin of students.
In 2020-2021, most students studied in public institutions (78%), mainly in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and in the North and Center regions, essentially to obtain a bachelor’s degree (43%) and a master’s degree (27%).
Business sciences and law, engineering, social sciences and journalism, health and social protection, and arts and humanities were the areas of study that added the most students.
CRUP includes public universities, the Portuguese Catholic University (private), the ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and the Instituto Universitário Militar.