Higher Education in Portugal in the Last Decades: Old Trends, Recent Challenges

In this paper we analyze the evolution of Higher Education in the last three decades and the effects of the recent Portuguese economic crisis, officially started at 2011 with the intervention of International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission. Based on the statistical data produced by national and international organizations we show that the process of “massification” of higher education in Portugal is late compared with other European countries – it only started in the middle eighties - and it did not question the elitist character of this educational level. We also argue that the present economic crisis may contribute to strengthen it elitist character