Doctoral education in Portugal has undergone structural and institutional changes, resulting in new and diverse educational and research designs. Doctoral education in Portugal has undergone structural and institutional changes, resulting in new and diverse educational and research designs. These changes have affected doctoral programmes significantly. Some of the main debates regarding recent changes revolve around tailor-made programmes for individuals versus compulsory, pre-structured courses; basic research skills versus transferable skills; degree duration and expected completion times; different forms of financial support; innovative support practices and programmes; types of academic guidance and training opportunities; and the impact of digitalisation. Other trends include the expansion of collaborative partnerships and international exchanges, such as university-industry partnerships, cooperation with other sectors of society, and international associations between similar universities. These changes are centred around students' motivations, experiences, purposes, and achievements. It is also necessary to consider their future orientation, taking account to doctorate education elsewhere.

The objective of this project is to identify and characterize the impact of the international partnership programs (IPS) on Portuguese universities. This program was created in 2006-2007 by inviting several American universities (MIT/CMU/UTA) to help develop selected universities. The lead universities were selected on the basis of their area of expertise (engineering, information technology and later medicine and business), the quality of their research, their degree of internationalization and their links with industry. Our research question is what impact did this have on 1) organizational change (including non-selected research teams) 2) curriculum innovation 3) staff development 4) student mobility 5) industry-university collaborations.

This projects aims at identifying and analysing typical trajectories of success, failure and dropping-out among higher education students, relating them to structural and institutional parameters, and looking for explanatory factors and best practices. The scope of the project is nationwide and it spreads through the various Portuguese higher education subsystems. The analysis is carried out at three levels: structural, institutional and biographical, using statistical sources, surveys, institutional documents and in-depth interviews. The project is included in the programme “The Promotion of Educational Success and the Fight against Dropping-Out and Failure in Higher Education” of MCTES (Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education) and is supported by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology). The research team is formed on the basis of a consortium between CIES-ISCTE and ISFLUP, and has also the cooperation of other higher education institutions and students’ unions.

To understand what problems arise when the measures to reduce the deterioration of the quality of the environment due to inclusive agriculture made under Directive No. 2078/92 are implemented. In particular the socioeconomic aspects with regard to the attitude of social groups towards the environmental aims of the European Community are considered by a multidisciplinary and supranational research project. The research project seeks to: i) analyze and evaluate the integration of environmental aims into agricultural policy, using the supporting environmental measures as an example; ii) determinate the attitudes of the agricultural population toward the aims of environmental protection; ii) investigate the socioeconomic framing conditions, which affect the implementation of the measure.