“For Portugal to reach an investment level of 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in research by 2030, it means doubling public spending and multiplying private spending by 3.5 times, until 2030, which is equivalent to creating around 25,000 qualified jobs until 2030 in the private sector, that is, about 2,000 per year”, said Manuel Heitor, at the end of the meeting.

The Minister of Science and Higher Education, stated that it is now important to expand to “more vulnerable groups”, in order to solve the problem of demographic decline and reach 2030 with more students attending to higher education.

Addressing the polytechnics, he stressed that these institutions “must continue the process” of investing in professional courses that they have been taking that attract currently 400,000 students, targeting them in the future also to people who are already part of labour market.

The final challenge is to better position higher education institutions at a European level, strengthening the networks of European higher education institutions and creating management models based on a European consortium, which makes it easier, for example, for the recruitment of teachers and research together.