The “very significant increase” in new foreign students, who chose the Algarve to take complete higher education courses, proved to be a balloon of financial oxygen for the University of Algarve.
According to the dean of UAlg António Branco, this school year 185 candidates from other countries joined the institution, a number well above the 50 in 2015/16 and which makes a good contribution to facing the problems of underfunding with which the academy is debate.
The students in question came to occupy first-year vacancies, from a special contingent for foreign students, and pay a “differentiated fee”, ranging from 2000 to 3500 euros a year (the fee for Portuguese students is 969,83 euros). This allowed their arrival to have “compensated, in part” for the maintenance of the value of tuition fees in the first cycle, deliberated by the General Council.
The UAlg accounts were one of the subjects discussed this Friday at a meeting with journalists promoted by the university's rectory. António Branco did not shy away from answering all the questions that were put to him, which ranged from the institution's financial situation to the usual practice, going through a medical course and the creation of a university hospital in the region, within a few years.
In the field of UAlg's budget, the rector did not hide his dissatisfaction with the amount allocated to him in the cake of State funding for Higher Education: around 33 million euros. An amount that “is insufficient to pay all personnel expenses, not covering more than 75 percent” of needs.
This value is less "by 7 million euros" than the budget allocation that UAlg had in 2010, which was around 40 million euros. And, although it has increased "by about 2,5 percent compared to the previous year, this only makes it possible to cover the increase in expenditure caused by the replacement of salaries in the public sector."
This forces the university to find solutions on the revenue side to balance its budget. “This is done in three ways: through fees charged to students, that is, through the efforts of families, through projects in which we are partners and through the provision of services”, he summed up.
The dean even proposed an increase in the tuition fee for the 2016/17 school year, but his proposal was rejected by the General Council. A rejection that did not have as great a weight as could be expected in UAlg's accounts due to the many foreign students who entered, which increased to «about 200» students from abroad taking courses at the institution and who pay a higher fee. .
Among “permanent” foreign students and students who choose to take part in their training at UAlg under international and mobility programs such as Erasmus, the Algarve university already has 1200 students who came from abroad. That is, close to 15 percent of UAlg's student population came from other countries.
Despite this, the university's situation is not sustainable in the long term, if the value of direct transfers from the State remains at the same levels. “If the level of the cut in the endowment is reduced to half of the 7 million euros that we have lost since 2010, I think that the balance would be found”, said António Branco.
António Branco maintains the hope that the underfunding of Higher Education Institutions will be reversed soon. “When the Troika memorandum was applied, there were cuts in all public sectors. Once the adjustment program is finished, our expectation is that the financing values will return to what they were», he considered.
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