The University of Minho registered a 15% drop in demand for foreign students and, in a “truly exceptional” year, it will extend opening hours, take classes on Saturday and operate in a “mixed regime”, between live and audiovisual .
In an interview with the Lusa agency, the rector of the Minho academy, Rui Vieira de Castro, pointed out the students’ accommodation as one of the “biggest difficulties”, stressing that “it was already” before the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus and that it was necessary to invest about 250 thousand euros in university residences to adapt them to the requirements of health authorities.
Another “something of concern” pointed out by Rui Vieira de Castro was the increase in operating costs that the measures that had to be adopted to “try to stop” the proliferation of the new coronavirus, but the rector recalled the program contract between university and Government which provides for compensation in the event of additional costs for institutions caused by statutes.
“We have seen ourselves preparing for this scenario since June. We reorganized the operation of the campuses, because it is impossible to have all students at the same time on the premises and comply with the necessary distance measures ”, pointed out Rui Vieira de Castro.
Therefore, he said, “the classes have been reduced, the class schedule has been extended – before there were classes until 18:00, this year it will be until 20:00 – there will also be classes on Saturday, when these were only for postgraduate courses, masters and doctorates, the opening hours of canteens and restaurants have also been extended, circulation corridors have been created in all spaces. Everything was reviewed and designed to, in a pedagogical logic, adapt the university’s operation to the required rules ”.
As for classes, Rui Vieira de Castro explained that “they will work in a mixed regime, but with preference in the preferential regime, which is the one that best suits the pedagogical plan followed by UMinho”.
The face-to-face regime “will have more focus in the first years of the various courses so that a greater link to the institution and the courses is created by the new students”.
Still regarding the new students, the Dean noted the decrease in the demand for UMinho by foreign students and also the decrease in the demand for temporary mobility programs, such as the Erasmus program.
“We anticipated, in a very strict sense, much more significant breaks. In the search for foreign students to do a complete cycle here, there was a decrease in demand of around 15%. The sharpest break is being felt both at the exit and at the entrance of students to temporary mobility programs, due to the uncertainties of circulation, the closure of universities and other conditions that may happen again ”, he described.
For Rui Vieira de Castro, one of the biggest concerns, “which is no longer new but that this pandemic situation has worsened”, is that of student accommodation: “There was already a great deficit of beds. We had to reduce the beds in university residences in order to adapt them to the required security measures, if there were only a few, fewer remained, although the decrease was not very drastic ”, he said.
Of the 1,400 beds made available at UMinho university residences, 10% (140) had to be suppressed.
The pandemic context also forced the Minho academy to “make expenses that were not foreseen”, such as hiring staff, additional cleaning expenses, signage, contracts with suppliers.
“Obviously, costs have increased and that worries us. I want to believe that the Government will be sensitive to this issue within the program contract that exists. The Ministry of Finance has been asking the university to cover the additional expenses, but so far we do not know of any increase in the budget allocation ”, he said.
Portugal accounts for at least 1,846 deaths associated with covid-19 in 60,895 confirmed cases of infection, according to the latest bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health (DGS).
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