copies of each other

Joaquim argues in this post that with the exception of Lisbon, Porto and possibly Coimbra all government universities and their dependencies should be closed in the country. I quite agree.

The reason is that in a country of Catholic culture like Portugal where homogeneity of thought is the distinctive characteristic all universities teach roughly the same thing in each field and with the same methods. If this were a large country, distance could be a consideration to spread universities which look like copies of each other throughout the territory. However, this is a small country. Three government universities seem to me more than enough.

As for large private universities, the tendency over the next several years is for them to go bankrupt one by one, and some have already done so. The reason is that they offer exactly the same product as government universities, though at a higher price. The only non-goverment university that has something different to offer is the Catholic university which, accordingly, will be the only one surviving in the long-run together with small, highly specialized, private Institutes.