Some higher education institutions have begun developing early warning systems to prevent academic failure and reduce student dropouts before they express their intentions, making it harder to intervene later.

Funding for Initiatives

Last year, higher education institutions received over €10 million in funding under the Programme for Promoting Success and Reducing Dropouts in Higher Education.

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This initiative primarily targets first-time higher education students, encouraging universities and polytechnics to adopt innovative teaching, learning, and assessment practices, as well as tutoring and mentoring programs. Some institutions were already following these paths and can now expand their efforts with this support.

Voices from Academia

The vice-rector of the University of Lisbon (UL), Luís Castro, in an interview with the media said:

“Almost all the activities were already underway in some of the schools. Now, we are trying to generalize good practices and provide them with a more stable foundation to ensure their longevity.”

The mentoring and tutoring programs at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) of UL, which have been in place for around two decades, exemplify this initiative. “Other schools have implemented these programs for less time, and now we are expanding them to all institutions,” explained the program coordinator.

This has become a focus for public universities and polytechnic institutes to promote academic success. However, some institutions aim to take it further by developing alert systems to target students at the greatest risk.

Last year, ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa tested this approach through the Fénix platform, which contains information on students’ continuous assessment across all subjects.

The goal is to analyze students’ academic performance and identify those facing significant challenges to understand what is going wrong and provide more personalized support, explained Rosário Mauritti, coordinator of the IN-Iscte project focused on reducing dropout rates.

UL is already using a similar system across all its schools, and from next month, it will implement another monitoring system to assess the impact of the measures on the academic performance of identified students.

According to the vice-rector, an IST researcher is developing a data analysis system that will use academic records to identify risk profiles, enabling early flagging of students who need additional monitoring.

The Role of Faculty in Prevention

Other institutions do not yet have this type of tool but recognize the need for preventive action before students express their intentions to drop out. In this case, teachers play an essential role.

At the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, students are always contacted when they request to cancel their enrollment to understand their reasons and explore the possibility of reversing their decision with the support measures available.

“However, the level of success is not very high,” acknowledges Vice-Rector for Pedagogical Innovation José Cravino, who coordinates the Permanent Observatory of Dropout and Promotion of School Success. He explains that, in most cases, by the time students reach this stage, they have already made their decision.

Prevention is a priority for the University of Porto, which aims to assess students’ skills at the start of higher education to identify potential gaps in specific areas and take early action.

Jorge Ascenção Oliveira, coordinator of the Academic Success Observatory, adds that the university is developing algorithms to predict dropout rates based on student profiles.

Improving Access to Higher Education

With particular attention to new students, responses may also involve facilitating access to higher education. To this end, ISCTE inaugurated a new space at the beginning of the academic year that centralizes all academic services.

Rosário Mauritti explained:

“The services often had inconsistent opening hours and were scattered across different buildings. There was no real reception space. The idea is to create a location that brings together all responses in an integrated manner.”

In addition to students, many measures to promote success and reduce dropout rates also involve teachers. In this context, most institutions are enhancing teacher training and promoting collaboration and the sharing of experiences.

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