08 - Portugal - Financial support for students
Centrally no support measures are envisaged to give teaching or recovery support to students in
higher education, apart from initiatives that may occur in any school covered by university autonomy.
The social services of higher education are responsible for school social support. These services have
administrative and financial autonomy and can provide different types of assistance or services to
needy students in higher education.
In the area social support, it is the National Board for Welfare on Higher Education - Conselho
Nacional para a Acção Social Escolar no Ensino Superior (CNASES) - that is responsible, among
other things, for monitoring general policy developments in this area and the respective work of the
services involved, as well as the underlying criteria to attributing social benefits to students.
In the sense of improving the system of Social support in State higher, private and cooperative
education, and concordate law, the Decree-Law No. 122/03, 18th of June, the Social support Fund
was integrated into the Higher Education Department, with non-personal autonomous assets, having
the objective of ensuring payment of scholarships to students, in legally defined terms and supersedes
the Student Support Fund, created by the Law No.113/97, 16th of September.
The objective of social support is to allow all students, regardless of their economic situation, to attend
Higher Education. It is in the execution of this objective that the Department of Higher Education is
committed, through the funding given by the Social support Fund. In this sense the Higher Education
Department takes on the following powers:
• To support the definition of social support policies for higher education;
• To monitor the improvement and suitability of premises and facilities of the social support
network;
• To monitor the workings of social support school services;
• To propose that the money for social support be linked directly to social services;
• To manage the attribution of social benefits to students of non-State higher education;
• To develop activity, in the area of merit scholarships, that is the responsibility of the Ministry of
Science, Technology and Higher Education.
The school social support in force includes both direct and indirect assistance. Study grants and
emergency assistance are part of direct assistance, while meals, accommodation, health services and
assistance in cultural and sports activities come under indirect assistance. Study grants, awarded
annually; aim to contribute to supporting student in bearing the cost of being in higher education.
Eurydice - the information network on education in Europe
Date: 2009
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