Search

The paper analyses the influence of COVID-19 on Portuguese institutions' intake of international students and their responses to the pandemic. Two dimensions are considered: quantitative impact on international enrolments and higher education institutions' strategies for the recruitment and support of international students. The first dimension is analysed through national statistics and comparison of enrolments over the past five years. Then, the institutional strategies implemented to encourage recruitment of new international students and to support existing ones during the lockdown are explored. Statistics show that COVID-19 had a negative impact on international enrolments, although less severe than expected. Growth has continued, but at a much slower pace than in the past few years. The slowdown in growth was much more pronounced in polytechnics than in universities. Additionally, the measures implemented by Portuguese higher education institutions suggest that these have coped with COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink and redefine strategies.

The article examines how far the key Bologna objective of student mobility has been achieved in Portuguese higher education institutions and the main factors shaping it. It analyzes credit mobility, outgoing and incoming, between Portugal and Europe. Although mobility overall has risen, incoming mobility has grown faster, making Portugal an importer country. Portugal's attraction power is explained mainly by its location, climate, and leisure opportunities. For outgoing mobility, employability is the main driver, explained by high unemployment and an uncertain home labor market. The main obstacle is financial, so country choice is increasingly based on proximity and living costs. Another important constraint is curricular inflexibility of Portuguese higher education institutions. The findings suggest that mobility in Portugal is far from reflecting Bologna's policy goals, making the 2020 mobility target of 20% an ideal rather than an achievement.

Cross-border higher education (CBHE) has been changing the organizational boundaries of higher education institutions (HEIs). This study aims to analyze the shifting boundaries of Portuguese HEIs through the lens of the identity concept in organization theories, considering three contexts with different levels of regulation: African Portuguese-speaking countries, Brazil, and Europe. These different regulation contexts allow to analyze how the level of national regulation influences CBHE, how this relates to the shifting boundaries of HEIs, and how the public or private character of the institutions plays a role in influencing boundary shifts. This research indicates that shifting boundaries through CBHE are influenced by institutional identities shaped by different rationales and conditioned by local policy contexts. Public universities have refrained from creating campuses abroad or from franchising activities, and their international activities seem driven by academic and cultural rationales. Public polytechnics, more recent than universities, seem more open to embarking on CBHE, suggesting the existence of a malleable identity. Contrary to the public sector, private institutions have created campuses abroad, mainly in African Portuguese-speaking countries, apparently following an economic rationale to guide their CBHE activities.

The paper analyses the influence of COVID-19 on Portuguese institutions' intake of international students and their responses to the pandemic. Two dimensions are considered: quantitative impact on international enrolments and higher education institutions' strategies for the recruitment and support of international students. The first dimension is analysed through national statistics and comparison of enrolments over the past five years. Then, the institutional strategies implemented to encourage recruitment of new international students and to support existing ones during the lockdown are explored. Statistics show that COVID-19 had a negative impact on international enrolments, although less severe than expected. Growth has continued, but at a much slower pace than in the past few years. The slowdown in growth was much more pronounced in polytechnics than in universities. Additionally, the measures implemented by Portuguese higher education institutions suggest that these have coped with COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink and redefine strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how far the key Bologna objective of student mobility has been achieved in Portuguese higher education institutions and the main factors shaping it. It analyzes credit mobility, outgoing and incoming, between Portugal and Europe. Although mobility overall has risen, incoming mobility has grown faster, making Portugal an importer country. Portugal’s attraction power is explained mainly by its location, climate, and leisure opportunities. For outgoing mobility, employability is the main driver, explained by high unemployment and an uncertain home labor market. The main obstacle is financial, so country choice is increasingly based on proximity and living costs. Another important constraint is curricular inflexibility of Portuguese higher education institutions. The findings suggest that mobility in Portugal is far from reflecting Bologna’s policy goals, making the 2020 mobility target of 20% an ideal rather than an achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border higher education (CBHE) has been changing the organizational boundaries of higher education institutions (HEIs). This study aims to analyze the shifting boundaries of Portuguese HEIs through the lens of the identity concept in organization theories, considering three contexts with different levels of regulation: African Portuguese-speaking countries, Brazil, and Europe. These different regulation contexts allow to analyze how the level of national regulation influences CBHE, how this relates to the shifting boundaries of HEIs, and how the public or private character of the institutions plays a role in influencing boundary shifts. This research indicates that shifting boundaries through CBHE are influenced by institutional identities shaped by different rationales and conditioned by local policy contexts. Public universities have refrained from creating campuses abroad or from franchising activities, and their international activities seem driven by academic and cultural rationales. Public polytechnics, more recent than universities, seem more open to embarking on CBHE, suggesting the existence of a malleable identity. Contrary to the public sector, private institutions have created campuses abroad, mainly in African Portuguese-speaking countries, apparently following an economic rationale to guide their CBHE activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]