University of Algarve one step ahead in Futurália

“I found the courses very interesting and that could be my future for the university”. This is how Manuel […]

“I found the courses very interesting and that could be my future for the university”. This is how Manuel Macilha, 16 years old, from the Educational Institute of Lordemão, Coimbra, comments on the view to the University of the Algarve, in Futurália – Education, Training and Educational Guidance Fair, which took place at FIL, in Lisbon, this week last.

As soon as the doors open, thousands of young people, from different age groups and from various regions of the country, occupy the building's atrium, in a great agitation and animation. There is a lot of hurry to conquer the space, get to know all the offer and gain some contact with the new school reality.

The University of the Algarve (UAlg) is one of the more than 300 higher and professional education institutions, both national and foreign, which were present in the FIL pavilions.

The training offer is disseminated through a wide range of activities, ranging from the provision of traditional information leaflets and school materials, to the use of technologies such as virtual glasses and cameras, and gym equipment, and theater and music shows.

But the strong point in this meeting between students and colleges and schools that will mark their future is the possibility of talking to volunteers, mostly students, who present their courses and academies better than anyone else.

In this year's edition, UAlg is represented by a team of eleven people. The objective is to transform indecisions into a defined and concrete plan. Manuel Macilha, one of the many undecided, confesses: “I personally don't know where I want to go, so I'm taking the opportunity to see it. So, I have seen courses that interested me a lot”.

Márcia Marcelino, on the other hand, says that “he came with a fixed idea, which was to look for colleges and universities that had to do with medicine”. The 17-year-old student says that she has always had “this mania for keeping medicine in her head”, but that visiting the fair helps her to better understand the available alternatives.

 

Márcia André, a technician from the UAlg Communication and Protocol Office, reveals that the most frequent questions asked by students are related to the “employability rates”, the “professional opportunities”, the specifics of the courses offered by the Algarve academy and, for example, “detail about the medical course”.

The Integrated Masters in Medicine, for which "there are always very interested students", as well as the courses in Marine Biology, Tourism and Hotel Management, are some of the most discussed by visitors to UAlg spaces, says Márcia André, for whom the presence at the fair “has been going very well”.

Paulo Ferreira, a student in the 2nd year of Business Management, says that he made his first visit to Futurália in the 11th year. Now, as a UAlg volunteer, he tries to help the younger ones in their “decisions about the courses they want, what they like to do the most”, even to “not be studying for exams that won't do them any good”.

For the student, entry averages are among the top concerns. “One of the questions I receive the most, and right from the first ones, is what is the average for entry. I see this insecurity, it was like that in my time”, he confesses.

With regard to UAlg's location vis-à-vis large cities, he considers that the distance is perhaps less and less “an obstacle for something they want to do”.

Paulo Ferreira, who does not fail to affirm “the fact that he likes the course”, emphasizes that, “in general, to talk about the student and academic environment, I think there is no one better than students to talk about it with other students”.

In the 2016 edition, Futurália registered the presence of 79 000 students and this year everything points to the number having been surpassed. André Botelheiro, coordinator of UAlg's Communication and Protocol Office, made “a very good balance. A lot of people passing by our stands, a lot of people taking our promotional materials, our brochures, our flyers”.

 

In addition to the usual questions, André Botelheiro notes that others are emerging, about new training offers, for example, such as summer courses. the TeSPs are new short-term courses, very aimed at students who come from vocational education and who find here a higher education vocational training solution that gives them access to level 5, and then, later, they can even join the higher education in a preferential way”, he points out.

Regarding the participation of UAlg students in the fair, the coordinator values ​​their “testimony of what it is like to live in Faro, which is to participate in the academy of the University of Algarve”. After all, he observes, "people leave somehow enlightened and without this collaboration, our work would certainly not be successful".

 

This article is by: Beatriz Dias and Rafael Duarte, 1st year students of the degree course in Communication Sciences, at the School of Education and Communication of the University of Algarve.

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