Approximately half of the students who enter higher education in Portugal do not complete their undergraduate degree within the expected time, according to an analysis by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation. In public education, only 50% of students finish their undergraduate degree within the stipulated duration, while in private education the rate is 53%. Even three years after the expected deadline, one-third of students still have not completed the course. In integrated master's degrees, the situation is slightly better, with 55% completing within the expected time and 73% three years later. Dropout rates one year after enrollment reached 30% in 2022/2023 and 2023/2024, being higher in courses with lower entry grade requirements.
The number of new enrollments in STEM areas has grown significantly. In ten years, there was an increase of almost ten thousand students in these areas, representing a 57% growth, and the proportion rose by 2.3 percentage points to 28.5% of total new enrollments in 2024/2025. At the same time, international students in higher education quadrupled in the last 15 years, going from 20,000 to 80,000, with particularly strong growth in integrated master's degrees, where the number increased sevenfold. Brazil, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, France, and Italy were the main countries of origin.
In the academic year of 2024/2025, more than two million students were enrolled in the Portuguese educational system, a 30% growth compared to a decade ago. This increase is mainly due to population growth related to immigration, offsetting the decline in preschool and secondary education students. Regarding teacher training, 9,466 new teachers graduated between 2021 and 2025, but this number remains below the approximately three thousand annual retirements expected. In Physics and Chemistry subjects, the number of graduates dropped drastically from 703 to just 32 between the periods of 2006-2010 and 2016-2020, although signs of a reversal of this trend are already being recorded.
