University of Coimbra

The University of Coimbra (Portuguese: Universidade de Coimbra) is a Portuguese public university in Coimbra, Portugal. It is one of the oldest universities in Europe and one of Portugal's most important higher education and research institutions. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, a group of leading European research universities, whose inaugural meeting it hosted.

Stats and other info

• Nowadays it has students from 70 different nationalities; almost 10% of its students are foreigners, being Portugal's most international university.
• This university was the first in Portugal, limiting the time for degree completion. The degree programs have a specified minimum and maximum time for completion. The time limit is 6 years from the date of first enrolment for the 4 years degrees, and 8 years from the date of first enrolment for 5 years degrees (i.e. Medicine). After the limit, students have to pay the entire costs of them courses, if they want to continue at the university.
• The tuition fee for all its undergraduate students is 880?/year (2004/2005), which is the maximum fee allowed to public universities by the State Law.
• The university do not have special classes for workers or night classes.
• Overcrowded classrooms are frequent in some disciplines of Sciences and Technology, Law, and Economics Faculties, where students must to stay on their feet during the classes or even stay outside the classroom. These faculties have the highest abandon rate and the biggest average time for degree completion of all university.
• School year calendar starts in October and finishes in July.
• As almost all public services in Portugal, the university have an overdimensioned administrative, bureaucratic and auxiliary staff which leads to inefficiency and expensive losses.