Portugal: Dimensions of Academic Job Satisfaction
Portugal has a binary system of universities and polytechnics and, within that, public and private institutions. This provides a diverse background against which to examine academic staff job satisfaction, starting with the fact that only universities can
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Portugal: Dimensions of Academic Job Satisfaction Diana Dias, Maria de Lourdes Machado-Taylor, Rui Santiago, Teresa Carvalho, and Sofia Sousa
The Portuguese higher education system has a very long and rich history. Portuguese higher education, like higher education systems elsewhere, continues to struggle with a desire for democratisation and the challenge of dealing with its resultant massification. Academics are a crucial part in this equation, since the profession needs to adjust itself in order to both face and promote change (Taylor et al. 2007). The academics’ intellectual capital is the most important asset of a higher education institution, particularly their competence and commitment in successfully dealing with its goals, transformation and challenges. However, accompanying organisational changes, there has been a shift in academic careers as they became less predictable and, especially in the early stages, more unstable. D. Dias (*) ISLA Campus Lx – Laureate International Universities, Lisbon, Portugal Center for Research on Higher Education Policies (CIPES), Matosinhos, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] M. de Lourdes Machado-Taylor Center for Research on Higher Education Policies (CIPES), Matosinhos, Portugal Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher education (A3ES), Lisbon, Portugal Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Bragança, Portugal R. Santiago • T. Carvalho Center for Research on Higher Education Policies (CIPES), Matosinhos, Portugal University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal S. Sousa Center for Research on Higher Education Policies (CIPES), Matosinhos, Portugal 187 P.J. Bentley et al. (eds.), Job Satisfaction around the Academic World, The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective 7, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5434-8_10, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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D. Dias et al.
This chapter provides, first, a general overview of the Portuguese higher education system’s historical institutionalisation, aiming at contextualising the main traces of the evolution of Portuguese academic profession. Second, the methodological approach is outlined. Third, this chapter presents the main results and conceptual analysis of an empirical study on academics’ perceptions of their job satisfaction in the Portuguese higher education system.
10.1 10.1.1
An Overview of Portuguese Higher Education Brief Historical Context
Portugal was one of the first countries to have higher education. The origin of Portuguese universities can be traced back to the middle of the thirteenth century, and the first Portuguese university was founded in 1290. However, until 1911, the country had only one university (in Coimbra), at which time the new Republican system created two other universities in Lisbon and Porto (Crespo 1993; Santos 2002). After the April 1974 democratic revolution, Portuguese higher education underwent profound changes and has been continually evolving ever since, with a significant expansion in the number and type of institutions. The de
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