Students call for more scholarships and more social support

With a new academic year looming, the Lisbon Academic Association (AAL) in Portugal is calling for increased funding for higher education and changes to allow more students to have scholarships, more social support for university canteens and more rooms at controlled prices, writes Natasha Donn for Lusa.

Diogo Martinho Henriques, president of AAL, which represents around 100,000 students in Greater Lisbon, warned of the need to reform the funding of higher education institutions to meet the needs of students.

“The education system cannot continue to be the poor relation of our society, because it is through this system that the country grows and develops”, he told Lusa. According to AAL, there are “critical cases that range from the lack of teaching support materials, infrastructural problems to the lack of investment in research”, but there is also a lack of answers to “mental health problems, which grow day by day”.
Full report on the Portugal Resident site