Portuguese hype attracts twenty-six thousand foreign students

  • ECO News
  • 10 July 2018

Seems like not only tourism is blooming in Portugal, as the number of foreign students registered at Portuguese universities almost doubled over the last five years.

Over the last five years, the number of foreign students choosing Portugal as their destination to get a diploma has significantly risen. Portugal has witnessed a growth in tourism, with Porto and Lisbon getting more and more noticed worldwide.

Our spectacular beaches, awesome weather all-year-round, and welcoming people make visitors want to come back again and again. And as for students, it seems like Portugal is one of the best places to study abroad if looking at these same factors – life quality is higher by comparison, and for many, the weather is a defining factor when choosing Portugal as a studying destination. And students come from all over the world to Portugal: all the way from our neighboring Spain to China.

Germans, Italians, Brazilians, Cape Verdeans, Angolans, French – the list is endless and the number has almost doubled in the last five years. Accordingly to Jornal de Notícias (JN) the number of foreign students enrolled in Portuguese universities has increased by 85% in this period, moving from 14 thousand to 26 thousand students.

This rise has been justified, accordingly to JN,  by the high standards of living that Portugal can offer these students alongside the fact that application procedures at Portuguese universities are overall much easier to do here.

Accordingly to JN, foreign students pay a higher price than Portuguese students for the same studying programme, but it is still a cost-effective solution for many foreigners as the prices practised in their home countries are much higher than those they end up paying here. In Portugal, foreign students pay seven thousand euros for the programmes that will cost Portuguese students around one thousand euros.

Seems like the Portuguese hype will continue to affect young people from everywhere and these are certainly great news for Portuguese university students as well, who will benefit greatly from the rise in diversity in their classrooms.

The quality of education provided by Portuguese universities has also been recognized in international rankings. Recently the LL.M. “Law in a European and Global Context”, taught at Católica University’s Global School of Law, destined to students who want to pursue international careers in law and business has jumped two spots on the LLM ranking standing now at 12th place.