Summary of an article originally published in Portuguese in Observador.
The problems facing Portuguese universities cannot be explained only by the individual decisions of those who work within them. They also arise from the rules, incentives, and structures that organise academic life. It is at this institutional level that some of the system’s most persistent weaknesses become visible.
The article draws on the distinction between inclusive and extractive institutions to examine how universities function. Inclusive institutions tend to distribute opportunities more openly, reward merit, facilitate the entry of new people and ideas, and subject power to relatively impersonal rules. Extractive institutions, by contrast, tend to protect established positions, restrict competition, and reproduce internal balances.
Applied to higher education, this distinction helps make sense of recruitment practices that are not genuinely open, heavy dependence on internal networks, limited academic mobility, and weak mechanisms of accountability. The problem lies less with individuals than with structures that shape how talent, ideas, and opportunities circulate.
The central issue is therefore institutional: what kinds of rules produce universities that are more open, competitive, accountable, and capable of renewal? Improving the system requires changing incentives, recruitment and promotion mechanisms, and the ways in which power is distributed and reproduced within institutions.