Evolution of vacancies and students' placement in higher education in Portugal

Abstract

Universities and polytechnics are educational institutions that make decisions within the university management, taking into account various factors such as the number of vacancies to offer (not only the university, as each course itself), the courses setting strategy and his regime, the type of the course and publication. This paper presents a study on the evolution of vacancies and students placed in higher education in Portugal, taking into account an analysis of data from the page of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education from 2004 until 2015. The results show that vacancies available experienced a positive increase. However, since 2010 until the last year, there has been a progressive decrease. In relation to the number of students placed, this has been subject to fluctuations and some turning points, but in the last two years showed an increase. The most popular courses were Management and Medicine, and those who had more students were Nursing and Management.