THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE ACADEMIC CAREERS IN PORTUGAL

Transcription

1 THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE ACADEMIC CAREERS IN PORTUGAL VIRGÍLIO MEIRA SOARES ARMANDO ROCHA TRINDADE CENTRO DE INVESTIGAÇÃO DE POLÍTICAS DE ENSINO SUPERIOR (CIPES) LISBOA FEVEREIRO 2003

2 1. Background Information Evolution of the Portuguese Higher Education System From the creation of the first Portuguese University in the 13 th century to the present day, three main periods of time should be considered: the classical phase, the modern period and the contemporary phase, as described in detail in a previous work 1. The first period includes the long time span from the 13 th century to the first half of the 20 th century, at the end of which 4 Universities already existed: two in Lisbon, one in Coimbra, one in Porto (see Fig. 1, Chronology). The second period, mostly concentrated around the 1970 s, saw the foundation of a network of 7 new public university institutions, in the main cities of the country, and a confessional one. The third phase, covering the two last decades of the century, produced 4 new public Universities, a large network of public Polytechnic Institutes and a very significant number of private Higher Education institutions, from Universities to Polytechnic Institutes and independent Polytechnic Schools. The current system counts 14 public universities plus the Catholic University, all represented in the Portuguese Rectors Conference, and a non-integrated public University Institute; 15 public Polytechnic Institutes, represented in the Council of Portuguese Polytechnic Institutes, and some non-integrated Polytechnic Schools; and more than three dozens public Higher Education Schools, depending both on the Ministry for Science and Higher Education and another Ministry (Military Schools, Police Academy and Health Schools). The private sector is represented by 9 Universities (some of them with various campuses, in different geographical areas), some University Institutes and close to one hundred Polytechnic Schools. The total student population is about students a. The teaching staff should reach about twenty thousand b. Although there is a present trend for stagnation, if not for a slight reduction of these figures, the future medium- and long-term tendency remains an open question, for it depends mostly on Governments future strategic policy on this subject. a students in 2000/2001. Source: Direccção Geral do Ensino Superior, b While numbers in the public HE sub-system are fairly well known, there is some uncertainty concerning teaching staff numbers in the private sector.

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4 3 Organisational Structure of the Portuguese Higher Education System To better understand, from a macroscopic point of view, the present structure of the Portuguese Higher Education system, it is to be noted that University-type institutions and Polytechnic ones are totally separated sub-systems (see Fig. 2), each with its own staff careers, positions and remunerations. Until some years ago, Polytechnic Institutions were only allowed to deliver just short-duration (3 year) programmes, leading to a bacharelato degree, while universities awarded mostly licenciatura degrees, corresponding generally to 4/5 years of study. Post-graduate degrees like Mestrado (MSc, MA) and Doutoramento (PhD) were restricted (and still are) to Universities. The decision-making structures for both sub-systems are also distinct, only converging at the highest (governmental and legislative) levels, as it is shown on Fig. 3.

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7 6 The culture and objectives of both sub-systems were designed to be different, just from the inception of the Short-Duration Higher Education concept, created in the late 70 s, which was the precursor of the Polytechnic sub-system. The main idea was to expand higher education in the country by locating new Polytechnic Institutes and Schools mainly in cities where no Universities existed, with some exceptions in the cases of institutions of former post-secondary education (ensino médio) like teacher-training schools and technical and commercial high-schools that had been operating for a long time and have thus been brought within the Polytechnic structure. Programmes to be taught would last three years, to have a distinctly applied nature and would be aimed at filling job needs in the regions where they were implanted. No provision for research activities were designed for the Polytechnic sub- -system, this being judged to be the proper province of Universities. The fact that they were not allowed being responsible for Mestrado (MSc/MA) or Doutoramento (PhD) programmes made them also very dependent on universities for the qualification and promotion of their staff. Although Universities and Polytechnics have now converged due to the fact that the latter were allowed to teach at licenciatura level and to deliver the corresponding degree, there is still not enough interaction between the two parts of the Higher Education system, being unusual that teaching staff changes from one to the other. Another main split in the Portuguese Higher Education system is shown by the existence of a powerful private sector operating in this field. This being a very recent phenomenon that was initiated about twenty years ago (with the exception of the Portuguese Catholic University, founded in 1971 and which has anyway, a very special statute) it was unexpected that in the following few years private institutions would play such an important role in expanding HE student populations c. Creation and Recognition of HE Institutions Public HE institutions are created by a Government Decree-Law, establishing the guidelines for their operation, their preliminary budget and size of the teaching and non-teaching staff. After they have attained a minimum critical size, the instituc Statistics of the academic year 2000/2001 show that close to 30% of the total of students are in private HE institutions (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Estatísticas da Educação, 2002)

8 7 tions propose and vote their statutes that are approved by the Government and thus gain their academic autonomy. While teaching programmes require to be registered at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the corresponding degrees are automatically recognised as official ones and do not in general require further accreditation. However professional accreditation is, in several cases, necessary, according to the law. Someone may have an academic degree but is only allowed to perform professional activities if the programme is accredited by the corresponding Professional Association (Ordem Profissional). Private HE institutions are created through the proposal of the instituting entity to the Ministry of Science and Technology, stating their objectives, target student population, nature of programmes, available human and material resources. It is in general a lengthy process that may take some years to accomplish. Once permission to operate has been granted, the corresponding degrees are recognised by the Ministry. It is very unusual that an institution loses its statute of official recognition or that a programme ceases to be recognised: this can only happen after very serious and notorious deviations from the proposed activity have been identified. However, there is a current of opinion among some academics and educational authorities that foresees the possibility for this to occur in case of consistently negative evaluations of the institution performance carried out by the National Council for the Evaluation of Higher Education Institutions, CNAVES (see below). 2. An Overview on Findings and Debates on the Attractiveness of the Academic Workplace Image and Employability of University Graduates Given the long tradition of university studies in Portugal (see Chronology of HE Institutions Development, Fig. 1), on the one hand and, on the other hand, the prestige associated, since very ancient times, to possessing a University degree, it is only natural that these rare individuals were considered highly privileged. Such persons received public recognition through the social and professional use of an aca-

9 8 demic title (doutor), together with their name, Dr. So-and-So d being the correct formula of courtesy. Variations to this rule were the cases of Engineering and Architecture, the corresponding titles (never to be omitted) being Engenheiro (Eng.) and Arquitecto (Arq.). University Professors tend to use currently this designation (Prof.) together with their name. This ancient habit survived until today: this shows how much academic degrees were (and still are) appreciated in Portugal and how much of an elite higher education graduates was considered. Until, at least, the end of the first half of the 20th century, possessing a university degree was a must for the descendents of rich or bourgeois families; and it can be said that unemployment of graduates was almost unheard of. As a consequence, a university career was a highly regarded one and its top categories were extremely well paid: full professors earned the highest possible salary in public administration, being at exactly the same level as Supreme Court Justices. This situation changed, nevertheless, in the last ten years, the relative weight of a professor s salary being now much lower than magistrates. On the other hand, gaining access to university studies is no longer a characteristic of higher or even middle-class young people: it can be said that the process is very much democratised nowadays. As a consequence of a much larger number of individuals achieving graduation every year, getting a suitable job becomes more and more difficult and sometimes they must accept employment at a wages level lower than their qualifications would justify. Exceptions to this situation are university programmes leading to generally well-paid liberal professions: medical doctors, lawyers, economists, computer scientists and architects, even if in some of these cases the progress towards earning high revenues may take a long time. Civil service has always been a preferred employment for young graduates, be it in education, in health services, in law and any governmental organisation, wherein a licenciatura diploma gives access to the general category of técnico superior, a comfortable enough position that could assure promotion and progress in the career d One can only distinguish between a university graduate and a person holding a Doctoral degree when in writing: the former uses just the contracted form (Dr.), while the latter title is fully spelt (Doutor). The same situation occurs in Brazil, due to the Portuguese cultural heritage.

10 9 just by gaining seniority. This situation may change soon quite sharply, due to the announced purpose of the government to reduce civil servants numbers e. Even if the employment situation for university graduates is clearly worse than it was some twenty years ago, there is a general recognition that it still is worthwhile seeking access to higher education, although this may be sometimes more the feeling of families than of the young people themselves. Looking at the other side of the HE panorama, it must be noticed that, the long tradition of university studies in Portugal led to an underestimation of the real value of polytechnic institutions and programmes. Even if statistics show clearly that polytechnics graduates take a shorter time to get their degrees and are more readily employed than their university counterparts, public opinion still frowns upon this kind of HE institution that is not exactly a university. Reforms and Debates on the Structure of the Academic Staff The present structure of academic staff is based on two laws defining, respectively, the careers of university teaching staff 2 (including Assistentes Estagiários, Assistentes, Professores Auxiliares, Professores Associados and Professores Catedráticos) and of the polytechnic one 3 (with just the three categories of Assistente, Professor Adjunto and Professor Coordenador). Figure 4 shows in a diagrammatic way the general access conditions for the university and polytechnic staff careers. For more details one should see references 1 and 6. Both careers include individuals having a licenciatura or a higher qualification, as Mestres or PhDs. About 46% of the teaching staff in public Universities has just the lower level of qualification, while in public Polytechnics this climbs up to more than 58% and in private Universities the figure is about 49%. f Also according to those statistics 45% of the teaching staff in public Universities has a PhD whereas in public Polytechnics that figure goes down to 6% and in private Universities is about 20%. e This was partly due to the fact that Portugal failed to comply in 2001 with the requisites of the Convergence and Stability Pact of the European Union, due to an excess of public expenditure. f Estatísticas, Pessoal docente, Direcção Geral do Ensino Superior, 2002.

11 10 However these figures are clearly not correct. They may give us an idea of the qualifications of the academic staff but it is obvious that some teachers are counted two or three times either because some of them teach in two or three, or sometimes

12 11 even more, institutions, one public and one or several private ones, or because they are even counted twice in the same institution when they work simultaneously in different departments. Veiga Simão, Machado dos Santos and Almeida Costa 5 show the inconsistency of some of those numbers in Law programmes, where teaching in different institutions is frequent, and conclude that the number of PhD s in Law are undoubtedly very much larger than the real number. One conclusion may be drawn: in some areas, like Law, the number of qualified staff is too low to meet the demands of the institutions. This calls for a closer look at the laws on staff careers in terms of conditions to be promoted and in what concerns the possibilities of teaching in several different institutions at the same time. The features of the university teaching career as briefly described above have not changed much during the last 30 years, despite the fact that, at different times, many educational authorities recognised that it may have become slightly obsolete. In fact, it is obvious that the many existing categories and the too large spectrum of qualifications of the teaching staff were adequate to the times when there were very few persons having a PhD, so that teachers were mostly non-doctors. The natural solution of reducing the career to the three categories of staff having at least a PhD (Professor Auxiliar, Associado and Catedrático) has been proposed several times but found two different kinds of opposition: from the teacher s trade unions, opposing the extinction of the categories of Assistente Estagiário and Assistente, due to the pressure of the very substantial numbers of people having just the corresponding levels of qualification; and from many Faculty Deans who fear there will not be enough PhD s, both in the short and the medium term, to fulfil all teaching needs of their institutions. A recent government proposal sidesteps this difficulty, stipulating that whenever a vacant post of Professor Auxiliar does not find any interested candidate possessing a PhD, the corresponding teaching work may be assigned, exceptionally, to a person who has just a Mestre degree. Other proposed changes do not seem so realistic, like stipulating that all vacant positions in all categories should be subject to a lengthy process of public (and thorough) examination of the proposed candidates. The workload for the corresponding academic courts would increase manifold as compared to the present situation.

13 12 Working Regimes In public Higher Education, the full-time regime amounts to 35 hours per week, divided between classroom sessions (from 6 to 9 hours per week for university teachers and 6 to 12 hours for polytechnic ones), research, administrative tasks and services rendered to external organisations. For a full-time teacher, a formal statement waiving any paid occupation outside the institution defines the exclusive dedication regime g, corresponding to a salary 50% higher than the equivalent category of teacher who is free to work for other organisations (see fig 5). Part-time working regimes are measured in terms of the fraction of full-time dedication effectively performed and are paid in exactly the same proportion. Some special situations (for instance in post-graduate teaching, for specialists recruited outside the institution permanent staff) may correspond to monthly payments for the duration of an ad hoc contract or be determined just by the number of hours effectively occupied in teaching. In public HE the permanent teaching staff (and, for that matter, all kinds of permanent staff) benefit from the Public Social Security and Public Administration Health systems. As there is not a teaching career established for private HE institutions, the terms of individual contracts are freely established between the institution and each teacher, it being frequent that they are paid by the number of hours of classes effectively taught. g There are some exceptions to this rule, the exclusive dedication regime not being violated by receiving royalties from copyrights, for teaching in another institution a limited number of hours (subject to the Institution s permission), by receiving compensation for teaching non-regular short courses, seminars, conferences, participation in special projects and in working groups appointed by the government.

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15 14 Salaries and Bargaining Mechanisms There is no tradition, in Portugal, of differentiation in remuneration of the teaching staff (such as merit-pay), other than what concerns the different categories of teachers, salaries being rigidly fixed according to these categories and to the number of years of work in each one of these. As there are no formal mechanisms to appraise teachers work and the evaluation by students of the staff performance is mostly inexistent, there are not ways to justify salary differences between the best ones and the non-productive ones. No salary incentive is given to the best except when they are able to bring private money to the institutions. In this case they are allowed to receive part of that money according to the rules defined by the institution. However these funds are used by the Department where it has been generated and, in most cases, there is no redistribution policy except for some kind of small overhead that may be or not retained by the institution. Salary bargaining for the teaching staff is included in the yearly negotiation, within the scope of all public administration, for the updating of salaries according to the loss of buying power associated with the yearly inflation rate. Teachers are currently represented by their trade unions (Sindicatos dos Professores) as well as by the general Public Administration unions. Only when some modifications are proposed or actually introduced in the structure of academic careers in Universities and Polytechnics do these negotiations become a separate issue, and the Portuguese Rectors Conference and the Council of Presidents of Polytechnic Institutes usually become effectively involved in these debates and negotiations. Research Academics are organised for research purposes in Centres whose objective is to carry out research work within the Higher Education Institutions premises. Some of these Centres are included within the institutions structures and depend on the corresponding staff and budget. Some others, that may or may not be formally included in the institutions structures, are recognised as eligible to be funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), a governmental agency of the Minis-

16 15 try for Science and Higher Education designed to foster scientific research and development. In this case, the university acts just as a host institution in most cases, providing support infrastructures and a contribution of some of its permanent staff, the operating budget for the centre being provided by the Foundation. Unfortunately the Foundation acts as an autonomous entity and does not, usually, consult with the host institution leadership, which is a cause for some tension in mutual relations and certainly a lack of coordination in designing the corresponding policies h. As a consequence both the national and the institutional strategy regarding research needs improving. Nevertheless international peers evaluate the Centres activities every three years following an initiative of the Foundation and the results are made public. The continuation of any funded project and the increase or the decrease of that funding is conditioned by the results of such evaluations. Despite the lack of cooperation between the Foundation and the Institutions this has been seen as a positive step to improve the level of the research in the country and also to increase its degree of internationalisation. In these Centres academic staff develop their research work and receive post- -graduate students, some of them already holding a loose position in any Higher Education Institution. This is a way of having a non-institutionalised form of staff development. This is also a way of having a non-institutionalised way of staff evaluation! However, staff development is not among the main strategic concerns of the institutions. The research work in the Centres is expected to lead students to obtain their MSc s, MA s or PhD s allowing them to be promoted in due time according to the legal rules. Thus one may say that the initiative is mainly left to the Centres or to the Departments according to their own capabilities in terms of research. A poor external evaluation result of the research work may be seen as a weak point of the institution but is not usually a preoccupation for the leadership of institution: it is left to the Centre or to the Department. Strategic decisions on which research fields should deserve more attention are more often left to the FCT than taken by the institutions themselves. Despite all the deficiencies of this organised disorganisation it must be said that the main objectives of developing and internationalising research have been h However it must stressed that FCT will not fund any Centre before having it recognised as eligible by the Host Institution.

17 16 successfully achieved during the last years. Moreover, during the last decade research infrastructures were significantly developed and the majority of the scientific community is happy with this situation. Research in Private Institutions Special attention must be given in what regards private institutions. Although there is some research going on in these institutions, the amount of their research is much less than in the public ones. It is not possible to predict how this will be affected by the changes that inevitably are going to take place. Additionally it is known i that staff development programmes in some private institutions (and also in some public polytechnics) are not using enough the possibilities offered by the public universities and are instead being carried out in cooperation with foreign universities! We will refer to this later in this work but one can simply guess that such behaviour is mainly due to the existing mistrust among the different sub-sectors. Recruitment of Younger Graduates for an Academic Career Under the present regulations of the universities teaching staff career, the minimum access requirement is the degree of licenciado. The institution takes the initiative, by making a public announcement for a given junior position. It is however taken for granted that candidates know that they are expected to progress in academic terms, this meaning that successive higher degrees (Mestrado and Doutoramento) are expected to be obtained, under rather rigid time conditions. a) Access to the Mestre degree: A public announcement, through national-circulation newspapers, states the number of vacancies for a clearly-defined Mestrado degree programme, the deadline for applications and the specific conditions candidates should comply with: academic background, nature of previous diplomas and quantitative grading obtained, previous professional experience in the specified field and other relevant data such as having or not a teaching position at an educational institution. i This information may be obtained from leaders, WebPages and even public advertisements.

18 17 Many institutions require a minimum level of achievement in previous studies (currently a final classification of 14/20) or a significant curriculum in the specified field of activity. Other preference conditions for acceptance should be explicitly spelt in the announcement, being trivial that candidates already serving within the institution as Assistentes Estagiários are given a higher priority. An ad hoc academic board ordinate the candidates by relative merit, on the strength of the data provided, and selects the best ones up to the full capacity of the programme. Results of the procedure are publicised and are subject to a procedure of contention. The programme generally includes one year of courses and research seminars, at the end of which, if successful, students must chose a dissertation subject and ask a professor to become their supervisor. In case of acceptance, the matter is conveyed to the scientific board of the institution, that takes due note and usually appoints the proposed supervisor. The dissertation should be ready by the end of the following academic year and, should this be the case, the supervisor declares the student ready for the public defence of this dissertation. The formal act takes place before an academic court appointed for this purpose, the student having the opportunity to discuss with the jury the details of the work produced and to answer whatever questions or objections may have been made. The result is expressed as accepted or rejected; in some institutions the acceptance may be graded by the attribution of honours. As a collateral comment, we feel that many students success is closely linked to the dedication of the supervisor, who really cares for the student s progress and provides full and frequent orientations to assure it. Conversely, many failures might be assigned to a significant lack of the supervisor s support. b) Access to a doctoral degree In most Portuguese institutions there are not specific formal doctoral programmes that students should follow. The initiative to become a doctoral candidate belongs to the student and, in most cases, this occurs when the student is already either a member of the teaching staff at a HE institution as Assistente or more or less loosely linked to research activities in a University or a research Centre recognised by

19 18 the Foundation for Science and Technology. The candidate must possess already a Mestre degree or an equivalent qualification j. There are two significant hurdles to overcome in this process: first, to chose an appropriate research theme for the thesis; second, and closely linked to the first, to find a Professor willing to become the thesis supervisor. If and when a Professor is agreeable to this, a formal proposal must be presented to the scientific board of the institution that is supposed to award the degree. The board registers both the candidate s intention and the research theme, which will be reserved for something close to ten years. Some institutions require the appointment of a local co-supervisor whenever the proposed supervisor does not belong to its staff. Both the definition of the research subject and the choice of a suitable supervisor are much easier for candidates already belonging to one of the two types of organisation defined above, for it is in their direct interest that a member of their team acquires a valuable academic qualification. This is not true for outsiders, who may experiment some difficulties in solving these initial problems. Progress is, of course, easier for doctoral candidates fully immersed in a research oriented environment, dealing with matters closely related to the candidate s subject; this may not be true for candidates working in a university department where research activities are not fully developed and where teaching or administrative duties may take precedence over the dedication to the thesis progress. For this reason, the law provides opportunities for Assistentes who are doctoral candidates to have a paid leave of absence for a maximum period of three years, expecting this to be enough for all the necessary activities of study, bibliographical research, fieldwork or laboratory experiments and the actually writing of the thesis. Experience shows that these expectations may be eluded. Either the student on leave has a well-planned working programme and keeps faithful to it, or, alternatively, this period is passed within a research organisation that provides the scientific environment suitable for achieving real progress or there is the risk for the candidate to get lost when strictly left alone, losing progressively motivation and working discipline. j There is an alternative path to having the degree of Mestre: to submit to an examination on pedagogic aptitude and scientific capacity.

20 19 A major responsibility lies with the supervisor, who has the duty to keep permanently abreast of the student s progress for all the duration of the preparation work aimed at obtaining the PhD. Some supervisors availability to meet with candidates is questionable and this may effectively jeopardise students progress and, in the long run, their actual success. A closer scrutiny by the Scientific Council of the institution on candidates progress reports, as regularly informed by their supervisors, could be the key to reduce the chances of failure. When the supervisor considers that the quality of the thesis is adequate and so it is the research work developed by the candidate, a formal notification in this sense is sent to the Scientific Council of the institution. An academic court is appointed for the public examination of the candidate and its composition is duly published in the Official Journal. The members of the court analyse the thesis and, in a first restricted meeting, either pronounces the work ready for public defence or rejects it on the grounds of lack of quality. An intermediate decision consists on giving the candidate a further period of 90 days to correct serious mistakes or weaknesses, their exact nature being explicitly pointed out. If and when the court accepts the thesis, a public examination takes place, this being the occasion for the members of the academic court to analyse critically the work developed by the candidate, in terms of scientific value, theoretical foundations and methodology. The candidate has the same duration of time used by the court to respond to the criticisms or objections that have been produced. After the examination is declared closed by the President (by law, the University Rector or a Vice-Rector), the court meets in private to reach a final decision. This may be a rejection or an acceptance of the thesis, and in the latter case awarding the PhD; and this may be graded in different levels of honours. The individual votes must be written and justified by each member of the court. While this whole procedure is common to all Portuguese Universities, according to the law, the non-explicit policy of different institutions regarding the stimulation and the consequent output of doctoral degrees may have led to very different situations. It can be stated, as a general rule, that Science and Technology Faculties are very active in producing yearly a significant number of PhDs. The same applies, at