Portugal gives autonomy with one hand and takes it with another

The thread is institutional autonomy – more freedom over strategy, budgets, finance, staffing, assets, and property.

The Assembly of the Republic passed the new RJIES institutional governance law on 8 May 2026, replacing a framework that had been waiting for replacement since 2007, and the government’s communiqué frames it as a historic shift towards stronger institutions.

Running alongside it, and attracting considerably more controversy, is the RJGDES – the Regime Jurídico dos Graus e Diplomas do Ensino Superior – the degree and diploma law covering qualifications, course types, and academic awards.

The government’s case for updating it is reasonable enough – the existing framework dates from 2006, built around the post-Bologna architecture, and a lot has changed. Microcredentials didn’t exist as a formal category, interdisciplinary programmes have proliferated, and lifelong learning has become a policy priority.

The National Education Council (CNE) broadly agreed the framework needed updating, describing the proposed new qualifications list as “alargado, atualizado e sistematizado” – widened, updated, and systematised. The CNE published its formal opinion, Parecer n.º 3/2026, at the end of last month.

The formalisation of microcredentials as a recognised form of provision is, the CNE says, “um avanço positivo.” Short cycles, autonomous curricular units, and part-time study could support both traditional entrants and adults needing requalification – uncontroversial enough. The disputes start with access.

Adding tests before fixing schools

The government’s proposal introduces minimum requirements in literacy, numeracy, and English as conditions for entry to higher education. JPN reported in March 2026 that the proposal would have institutions define specific requirements within common government guidelines, with PIAAC level 3 referenced as a possible benchmark for literacy and numeracy, and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as the reference point for English. Portugal’s below-average performance in the most recent OECD adult skills assessment is offered as part of the justification.

The CNE’s verdict is that the proposal “parece conduzir a mais problemas do que a boas respostas” – appears to lead to more problems than good answers. Its core argument is that the access question has been inserted into the degree law unexpectedly, “inopinadamente,” before there’s been a proper review of access policy and before secondary education has been reformed so that students can actually meet the proposed requirements. Designing higher education entry tests to compensate for a secondary school system that isn’t delivering the skills doesn’t address the underlying problem – it just adds another barrier on top of it.

The equality argument is pointed. New literacy, numeracy, and English tests would, the CNE warns, generate a new tutoring market – “um novo tipo de explicações” – with wealthier families better positioned to pay for preparation outside normal schooling.

The effects would fall hardest on students using special admissions routes – adults over 23 returning to study, candidates from professional secondary pathways, anyone for whom the standard academic route hasn’t been the way in. The CNE says new barriers would “dificultar-lhes, ou mesmo inviabilizar-lhes” access – make it harder, or even impossible – which sits awkwardly in a reform package advertised as supporting lifelong learning and reskilling.

RTP, reporting on the CNE opinion in May 2026, notes the minister’s position that the literacy, numeracy, and English criteria apply only to special competition routes rather than standard entry. If that reading is accurate, it narrows the proposal, though it leaves open why the CNE reads the text as raising wider barriers – and it’s the CNE’s reading that has shaped the public debate.

Sixty-five per cent locked out of master’s study

The postgraduate progression thresholds have proved still more incendiary. The proposal would introduce percentile-based filters for entry to master’s degrees and doctorates – with master’s study open only to students in the top 35 per cent of their bachelor’s cohort, and doctoral study limited to the top 25 per cent of a master’s cohort or the top 10 per cent of a bachelor’s cohort.

The CNE’s question is unambiguous: “Como justificar esta restrição abrupta no acesso ao mestrado?” – how can this abrupt restriction on access to master’s study be justified? Its answer is that it can’t, and its particular concern is professional formation.

Post-Bologna master’s degrees are, in many fields, requirements for qualified professional practice – engineering, school teaching, architecture, and others. A system that formally requires master’s-level credentials for professional licensing, then blocks 65 per cent of bachelor’s graduates from progressing to master’s study, isn’t internally coherent.

The doctoral filter produces a further practical difficulty the CNE is at pains to identify. The thresholds are automatic and retrospective – they don’t account for subsequent professional achievement, competitive selection by other bodies, or the outcome of a public doctoral scholarship competition. The CNE asks directly what happens to a candidate who has already won a competitive national scholarship but whose historic bachelor’s or master’s percentile doesn’t meet the RJGDES threshold. There’s no obvious answer in the proposal.

The CNE’s preferred alternative is institutional autonomy – let universities and polytechnics define candidate profiles for each master’s and doctorate, weighing marks, professional pathways, prior study, and interdisciplinary backgrounds against criteria set by the institution.

Its phrase for what the proposal actually does to that possibility is “afunilamento injustificado da autonomia pedagógica e científica” – an unjustified narrowing of pedagogic and scientific autonomy, a characterisation that carries some weight given the parallel RJIES reform was marketed as an expansion of institutional autonomy.

There’s also a cross-disciplinary problem the CNE identifies. Students taking a master’s in a different field from their bachelor’s – what the CNE calls “formação cruzada” – aren’t clearly protected under the proposal.

This kind of field-switching is, the CNE argues, increasingly important for professional conversion and labour market adaptability, and shouldn’t be “estancar, ou subalternizar” – halted or downgraded. A percentile filter calculated against performance in a previous, different subject doesn’t serve that flexibility.

Staffing at four-digit precision

Staffing is the third contested area. The CNE reads the draft as requiring teaching teams and course coordinators to hold doctorates or specialist titles specified at four-digit CNAEF classification level – meaning the area of the qualification would need to match the subject taught with considerable specificity.

For academics whose research and teaching has evolved since their doctorate, for interdisciplinary programmes that cross traditional field boundaries, and for professionalising master’s degrees that may need practitioners rather than purely research-profile academics in supervisory roles, this is a structural problem.

The CNE describes these requirements as having a “carácter fortemente restritivo e redutor” – a strongly restrictive and reductive character. It also questions the proposed annual ratio of around 1,800 ECTS per full-time-equivalent doctoral academic – roughly 30 students per teacher – as potentially too coarse for intensive supervisory programmes, and suggests lower ratios may be needed for master’s supervision and lower still for doctoral work.

The rectors say no

Lusa reported that both CRUP – the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities – and CCISP, the coordinating council for polytechnics, submitted unfavourable opinions. CCISP said its view “não pode ser favorável.” CRUP said it “manifesta a sua total discordância” – manifests its total disagreement. Both argued the proposed changes were deep, significant, and insufficiently justified.

CRUP went further, calling for suspension of the RJGDES process until the new RJIES was formally in place and until the government had provided “fundamentação clara” – clear justification – for what it was proposing. It warned that the proposed ratios and requirements could reshape institutions’ study cycles, increase financial burdens, penalise professionalising courses, and constrain programme provision. These are the same rectors who’d just been told RJIES was giving them more autonomy.

Students haven’t been supportive either. The mobilising slogan across student associations is “decreto de exclusão” – the exclusion decree. Reporting from RUC in Coimbra in May 2026 covers a public tribune at the Escadas Monumentais, organised by the movement “Avançamos pela Académica,” where students framed the literacy, numeracy, and English requirements as making entry more exclusive and elitist.

On 20 May, students and association leaders gathered outside the government headquarters in Lisbon. Associations from faculties across the University of Lisbon and NOVA FCSH were present. AEIST issued a formal “nota de repúdio.” The slogan in circulation was “Ninguém fica para trás! Na educação não aceitamos a exclusão!” – nobody gets left behind, in education we don’t accept exclusion.

The framing across student association coverage describes a reform presented as elevating quality standards that functions in practice as “triagem socioeconómica” – socioeconomic screening. The minister disputes that characterisation for standard entry routes. It’s the characterisation that’s landed.

Autonomy’s companion

The CNE makes the structural point – RJGDES should be coherent with RJIES, and its opinion recommends the final degree law wait until the governance reform is settled, because degree rules and institutional rules need to fit together. RJIES, passed on 8 May – is built around autonomy as its stated purpose. RJGDES, as its critics read it, centralises entry conditions, postgraduate thresholds, and staffing classifications simultaneously.

The government’s case is that the 2006 framework is nearly 20 years old, too ad hoc, and needs to handle a different kind of higher education system – one with microcredentials, short courses, more internationalisation, and the more flexible institutional structure RJIES creates. That’s a reasonable account of why a reform was needed.

What it doesn’t explain is why the resulting proposal requires entry tests before secondary reform, percentile filters for postgraduate progression, and staffing classifications at four-digit precision – all applied centrally, all resisted by the institutional sector the government claims to be freeing up.

Alberto Amaral, former rector of the University of Porto and former president of A3ES, Portugal’s accreditation agency, has suggested the RJIES binary reforms risk producing “academic drift” – one concern about mission blurring. The RJGDES critics are worried about something else entirely – that a law officially framed as updating the qualifications framework is also introducing new central controls that neither the rectors, the polytechnic councils, the National Education Council, nor the students think are justified or proportionate.

The CNE says the two laws should come in the right order and fit together. Whether the government takes that advice or presses on regardless will say a lot about what the fio condutor actually means in practice.