ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon


ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa is a Portuguese public tertiary education institution. It is located in the city centre of Lisbon, in Cidade Universitária, adjoining the :pt:Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa|Institute of Social Sciences and :pt:Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território|Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon. ISCTE was formerly called Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, but its full name was dropped in 2009 when it became a university institute of foundational nature. As of today, ISCTE is widely considered a fully-fledged public research university despite its traditional designation, as reflected in national news coverage of the performance of Portuguese universities internationally and open, external assessments by international organisations. ISCTE Business School holds institutional accreditations from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and Association of MBAs.

Schools

ISCTE is made up of four schools:
ISCTE also has an institute dedicated to executive education, namely INDEG-ISCTE Executive Education.

Degree programmes

ISCTE confers Bachelor's, Master's, Integrated Master's and PhD degrees and Habilitation in scientific areas such as Anthropology, Sociology, African Studies, History, Social Psychology, Political Science, Planning, Architecture, Economics, Finance, Business administration and Management, Human Resources, Marketing, Computer Science, Telecommunications Engineering, or Industrial Engineering.

History

ISCTE was established in Lisbon in 1972 as Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa using the faculty and facilities of the Instituto de Estudos Sociais as a first step towards a new and innovative public university in Lisbon. Its present designation dates from 2009.
From its creation, ISCTE was authorised to grant the bachelor's degree and the licenciatura degree, which was granted after the completion of four to five years of study that often required writing a final dissertation and thus was roughly equivalent to the current master's degree, instituted as part of the Bologna process. From 1983 onwards, ISCTE was also authorised to grant the master's degree, which was higher than the current Bologna process master's degree but still lower than a doctorate degree.
What was to be the first college of a never completed larger projected university always remained a non-integrated university college/institute. This situation was regularised in 1988, and from that date onwards, ISCTE grants all academic degrees, including Bachelor's, Master's and PhD degrees, Honorary doctorate and Habilitation. In 2000, a university organisational framework design for ISCTE was published.
ISCTE is today part of both the Fundação das Universidades Portuguesas and the Conselho de Reitores das Universidades Portuguesas. It is also one of the few public university education institutions in Portugal with a foundational nature, other examples being the University of Porto, University of Aveiro and New University of Lisbon.
It is known that, in 2002, the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities emitted the opinion that ISCTE should integrate the University of Lisbon, and in 2012, the University of Lisbon invited ISCTE to become a part of the bigger University, but ISCTE turned down both invitations.

Research units

ISCTE has quality research centers in all its domains. The major research centers are:
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