SNESup Flags 'Invisible Overload' in Portuguese Universities — Faculty Teaching Hours Bear Little Relation to What A3ES Accredits

Portugal's national higher-education union, the Sindicato Nacional do Ensino Superior (SNESup), has opened a new front with the country's accreditation agency, accusing universities and polytechnics of running degree programmes on teaching loads that routinely exceed what has been formally accredited, and quietly leaning on invited academic staff to absorb the difference.

The union's public statement on Monday 20 April targets the Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior (A3ES), the independent body that signs off on the teaching hours, staff ratios and contracted resources for every undergraduate and graduate course in the country. SNESup's argument is that the data the institutions file with A3ES at accreditation time is not the data that governs the reality of the classroom.

'Manipulation of contractual data'

SNESup president José Moreira used pointedly legalistic language to describe the practice. "What we are seeing is a maquilhagem of contractual data," Moreira said — a make-up job, a cosmetic adjustment of the figures. According to the union, the gap is most visible in the figure of the professor convidado, the invited lecturer hired on a part-time contract to plug specialist or seasonal gaps in a department's teaching plan.

In practice, Moreira said, many invited professors carry workloads indistinguishable from those of a full-time staff member: multiple courses per semester, dissertation supervision, exam boards and administrative duties. But because they are contracted at 30 or 50 per cent of full time, the institution can report a lower salary bill to A3ES while running the same volume of teaching. The extra hours are unpaid, unreported and — as far as the regulator is concerned — invisible.

A3ES has no mechanism to cross-check

SNESup's central complaint is not that this is secret. It is that A3ES does not currently have a mechanism to verify what institutions tell it. The agency relies on self-reported figures at accreditation and re-accreditation moments, typically every six years. Between those cycles, actual teaching load and actual contract status are not reconciled in any formal way. Moreira argues that the result is a systemic credibility problem for Portuguese higher-education quality control.

"This occurs in practically all higher-education institutions," the union said. Moreira stopped short of naming universities, but SNESup has filed written complaints on specific courses at several public universities over the past twelve months and says at least a handful rise to the level of "serious" non-compliance.

What the union is asking for

SNESup wants three things from A3ES and the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation. First, a cross-checking mechanism that reconciles the teaching hours declared during accreditation with the actual contractual status of the people delivering those hours. Second, public access to the staffing-and-load documents currently filed confidentially with the regulator. Third, stronger sanctioning powers where a mismatch is identified — up to and including the suspension of an accreditation.

The bigger picture

The dispute lands at a sensitive moment for Portuguese higher education. Undergraduate numbers dropped sharply in 2025 after the pandemic-era bulge unwound, and — as reported elsewhere this morning — the national secondary-school completion rate fell 10.7 points year-on-year, shrinking the university applicant pool further. Institutions facing a funding squeeze have strong financial incentives to hold headline staffing costs down. Invited contracts are the cheapest degree of freedom they have.

A3ES has not yet responded publicly to SNESup's statement. The Ministry, for its part, has said in recent months that it is working on a revised higher-education labour framework, expected to land in Parliament before the end of the 2026 legislative session.

Sources: SNESup; Executive Digest; Jornal Económico; A3ES.