The Secretary of State for Higher Education, Pedro Nuno Teixeira, stressed this Friday, in Braga, the need for “growth and maturity” in the way foreign students are welcomed at Portuguese universities and polytechnics.
Speaking to Lusa on the sidelines of the conference “Will our higher education be inclusive?”, promoted by Universities Portugal, the official admitted that the creation of a kind of “propaedeutic year” could be a good way to promote better integration.
“This need [de ano propedêutico] It may exist, but it will depend on the study areas and the profile of the incoming students. There are students from some countries whose integration is much easier, in terms of language, culture, training and curriculum. There may be specific needs, it will make sense to do this assessment institution by institution, perhaps even course by course,” he said.
Referring in particular to students from African countries and their integration difficulties, Pedro Nuno Teixeira said that “perhaps” the problem could lie in the expectations they created and at “misaligned” levels of academic readiness.
“Some of these waves of students come with expectations that don’t match, they come with a level of academic preparation that perhaps doesn’t match what is expected for the level of Portuguese higher education, which is demanding,” he said.
For this reason, he defended, it is necessary for the institutions to reinforce their work of integration and reception. “Growth and maturation are needed in the way we welcome and integrate these students, but also in the way we prepare future candidates to come study in Portugal, to adjust their expectations and know what we expect of them. ”, he added.
The governor stressed that starting in 2014, there was a “very large growth” in the number of foreign studentsespecially from outside the European Union, who chose Portugal to carry out their higher studies.
The creation of a propaedeutic year for Portuguese-speaking African students, to reduce the academic difficulties they face in Portuguese higher education, was recently defended by Miguel Chaves, coordinator of the Sociology department of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova from Lisbon. , which is conducting a survey on the universe of these students and their reception in Portugal.
In an interview with Lusa, the professor warned that the PALOP population in Portuguese higher education is currently facing “problems that come from the past and that have worsened in the last five years”, when the number of Guinean students began to increase substantially. .
The number of students from Lusophone African countries in higher education in Portugal has almost tripled in five years, but many face difficulties and there are high dropout rates, warns a professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Source: Observadora
