Announced this year, promising youngsters business experience, the government’s new higher technology courses are getting off to a slow and uncertain start.
According to Correio da Manhã, the two-year courses are only being offered by a handful of polytechnics – and there are “many uncertainties” surrounding them.
Joaquim Mourato, president of the council of Portuguese polytechnics, explained: “Nothing is ready to start in September. Everything has been done at the last minute. This will be a year of transition, and the number of courses will be very much reduced.”
Yet, says the paper, the Ministry of Education presented these courses as the “hot news of the next academic year”.
Youngsters interested in taking advantage of them still have until next Friday to sign up, but CM points out that there are already 144 applications that still await processing.
Also at issue is the fact that the courses substitute the previous CET (specialist technology) courses that used to run for only a year at a time and were totally free of charge.
These new courses will cost anything up to €1,068.92 (costs to be confirmed by hosting polytechnics), writes CM – inferring that the target-public that was used to the CET scheme may not be in a position to pay for this new initiative.
