The President of the Republic defended that the state should strengthen social action, instead of changing tuition fees in higher education, referring to the manifesto signed by dozens of personalities on this issue.
Speaking to journalists in a hotel in Santo Domingo, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa believed that “probably the government there will have to change the social action so as not to change the fees”.
Referring to the fact that “there is a group of teachers who want to change the fees”, the head of state argued that “touching the fees may have the problem of institutions that have their own revenue and suddenly find themselves without revenue”.
“I think it should be the state that strengthens social action and creates conditions for greater justice in this social action,” countered the president of the republic.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has been in the Dominican Republic since Wednesday evening, where he made an official one-day visit on Thursday, before taking part in the 28th Ibero-American Summit between today and Saturday, together with the Prime Minister, Antonio Costa.
Dozens of personalities, including former Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education Manuel Heitor and former Minister of Administrative Modernization Alexandra Leitão, are signing a manifesto today in the newspaper Público against the bribery system advocated by the OECD and for its phasing out.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defended in December that Portugal should introduce a system of tuition fees by level in which the amount paid by students in higher education would be determined on the basis of socio-economic criteria.
The manifesto’s signatories believe that this would mean “finally abandoning higher education as a universal public service and tending to be free, as provided for in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic”.
This manifesto also has among its signatories Left Bloc deputies Joana Mortágua and José Soeiro, PS deputies Isabel Moreira and Pedro Delgado Alves, university professors and leaders of student associations.
In the document they refer that public funding of higher education is “a factor of cohesion and social justice” and that the democratization of access to the highest degrees of education is part of “the social obligations of the state”, and should not, “under no circumstances” be called into question by “a financing model based on the user pays principle”.
Source: DN
