Public and Private Higher Education in Portugal: unintended effects of deregulation

Abstract

In a recent paper (Teixeira & Amaral, 2001), we presented a preliminary analysis of the effects of privatisation on the diversity of higher education systems. The conditions for promoting diversity are complex and difficult to pinpoint. With the advent of the 'market rhetoric', it is often considered that diversity in higher education is better ensured under stronger market regulation. Since privatisation is one of the main strategies for introducing market mechanisms in higher education, we analyse the consequences of the emergence of a private sector in Portugal, with special emphasis on its effects on its diversity. In the times of financial stringency which followed the 1974 Revolution, the development of the private sector was seen as positive, allowing for additional enrolments with no costs to the public purse. At the same time, advocates of private initiative claimed that private higher education institutions would be far more responsive than their public counterparts to demands of society and the labour market, due to their greater flexibility, entrepreneurial management and the need to ensure their clients' satisfaction. The private sector was thus supposed to provide more diversity, both at regional and disciplinary levels, while creating innovative solutions in its quest for protected market niches. In this article, we analyse how far these objectives have materialised, or if, on the contrary, they have remained in the domain of political wishful thinking.