Transition to Higher Education (HE) is a significant life event and it is supposed to be a very agreeable experience to students. However, such impact is not linear, being mediated by students' psychosocial variables and by their own perceptions concerning the HE environment. Transition to HE encompasses many tasks to cope with changes:…

Portuguese higher education is changing, with a significant impact on academic careers, reinforcing the academic "estate." The focus of this paper is the analysis not only of the gender differences per se, but it also relates them to other variables such as the higher education subsystem, career positioning, the sociocultural background…

Students face significant pressures in their decision about their career plan. These pressures are simultaneously internal and external, personal and social, individual and from the reference group. The present paper aims at understanding the reasons driving students' choices, perceived needs, and aspirations. Moreover, it discusses the major…

Given that higher education systems everywhere have opened to the masses, this paper analyses to what extent this phenomenon has really been accompanied by an effective democratisation of access and success in Portugal and Brazil. It looks at the expansion of higher education and discusses how the political system and higher education institutions…