Summary of an article originally published in Portuguese in Observador.
Universities ask academics to collaborate, share resources, build joint projects, and create critical mass. Yet the way academic careers are organised in Portugal often creates the opposite incentive: colleagues compete against one another for scarce opportunities for advancement, in a system where recruitment and promotion become blurred.
The problem is not merely interpersonal. It is structural. When career progression depends on defeating colleagues in occasional competitions, cooperation is no longer the natural outcome of the system and must compete with incentives for self-preservation. At the same time, competitions open to external candidates can appear to be internal promotions disguised as recruitment, undermining trust and weakening the credibility of hiring itself.
The article argues for a clear separation between recruitment and promotion. Recruitment should be open and competitive when a university needs new people, expertise, or capacity. Promotion, by contrast, should rely on demanding, public, and predictable criteria, with serious external evaluation, without turning each career step into a contest between colleagues.
The broader issue is institutional design. A university that depends on cooperation, academic freedom, and intellectual risk-taking cannot organise careers as a zero-sum game. High standards and predictability are not opposites. They can be part of the same infrastructure of trust.