US university ties helped reshape Portugal
Portuguese academic leaders say two decades of partnerships with US universities helped internationalise higher education, startups and technology transfer.
Two decades of partnerships between Portuguese and US universities have helped transform Portugal’s higher education and innovation ecosystem, according to Pedro Oliveira, dean of Nova SBE, and José Manuel Mendonça, who oversees Portugal’s strategic partnerships with MIT, Carnegie Mellon and UT Austin. Speaking on ECO and AmCham Portugal’s Transatlantic Talks podcast, they said the collaborations have raised Portugal’s international profile and are now drawing interest from American schools.
Mendonça said the first agreements with MIT and Carnegie Mellon were signed in 2006, followed by UT Austin in 2007, focusing on areas such as nanotechnology, advanced computing, digital media and smart manufacturing. He said the partnerships also helped spread technology transfer practices across Portuguese universities and some polytechnics, including patent and licensing offices, and supported entrepreneurship programmes that led to “hundreds of startups”. He cited Feedzai as one example of a company that would not have existed without the US partnership programmes.
Oliveira said the main gain for Nova SBE and Portugal had been internationalisation. He said 72% of the school’s master’s students are international and 70% of its faculty are foreign, adding that partnerships with institutions such as MIT make it easier to attract global academic talent. Nova SBE’s master’s programmes received more than 9,000 applications this year for 1,800 places, he said, with the fastest growth in demand coming from outside Europe, including the US.
Both men said attitudes in the US have shifted. Oliveira recalled that American universities initially viewed collaboration with Portugal with some scepticism, but said that “today” some US schools are approaching Portuguese institutions for joint projects. Mendonça said the partnerships also improved Portugal’s credibility in Europe and strengthened its ability to win funding from EU programmes.
The three state-backed partnerships with MIT, Carnegie Mellon and UT Austin were renewed at the end of 2024 until 2030 with a €90 million budget, according to the speakers. Looking ahead, both said they want the collaborations to have a stronger impact on Portugal’s productivity, with Oliveira pointing to artificial intelligence as a major opportunity and highlighting Nova SBE’s work with Harvard on an AI institute.
Originally published at Eco.pt