“What we fail to understand is that this Government, which appeared so willing, so prepared to provide answers to this generation, to young people and their families, is now unable to act. What they presented to us is exactly a regression,” criticized Sofia Pereira, the PS deputy and secretary-general of JS, in a statement.
For the socialist, the decision announced today by the Minister of Education to unfreeze tuition fees “is wrong”, describing it as a “step back and a very poor start in terms of this investment in young people”.
“What happens here is that after declaring throughout an entire election campaign that young people were a priority, what they have to offer them now is to continue ensuring that the cost of living is becoming increasingly unbearable,” she condemned.
According to Sofia Pereira, the increase of 13 euros “signals the direction the Government wants to take,” indicating a plan “not to democratize higher education, but rather to make it accessible only to those who can afford it”.
“We are also concerned about funding higher education, and we believe it should be reinforced. What cannot happen is that this cost is transferred to families and young people,” she argued.
The PS, according to the JS leader, aims to ensure “all young people have access to quality higher education” and address the qualifications of a generation that must be retained in Portugal.
“What the Government is doing is almost ensuring that access becomes more and more limited to those who can pay,” she criticized, asserting that “higher education should be for everyone, not just for some.”
For Sofia Pereira, after this being “one of the years with the fewest young people entering higher education,” the tuition fee thaw measure will result in fewer young people attending this level of education in the future.
“This goes against everything that would be expected in a period where the focus should be on young people, on qualifying them to ensure they remain here contributing in the future, and what they are doing is precisely the opposite,” she pointed out.
The Government will unfreeze, starting from the 2026/2027 academic year, the tuition fees for undergraduates, which have remained unchanged since 2020 and will increase from 697 to 710 euros, announced the Minister of Education today.
“The Government will also include in the proposed State Budget Law for 2026 the update of undergraduate tuition fees based on the 2025 inflation rate,” announced Fernando Alexandre.
The minister spoke at the end of a session presenting the final report of the study evaluating the social action system in higher education, held at the Thalia Theater in Lisbon.
