Higher Education in Lusophone Countries

Differences and Commonalities in Higher Education's Policy and Development

Portuguese-speaking countries represent one of the largest linguistic communities in the world, though this tends to be less visible in the case of higher education than for other widely spoken languages. Moreover, the existing literature on higher education in Lusophone countries is scarce and very unevenly distributed. Thus, in this article, we briefly present the higher education systems of these countries. In our analysis, we explore the main commonalities but also some of the major differences present in those systems regarding their development and policy issues. We give particular attention to their recent patterns of development and their regulatory frameworks regarding the governance at the system and institutional levels.