The departure announced on the academic benches
Over the years, the University of Évora has consolidated a community of around 8,000 students distributed across 6 schools and 26 departments, encompassing more than 120 degree-granting courses, according to institutional data from 2022. This academic mass represents an essential demographic engine for the surrounding territory, injecting vitality into a sub-region marked by deep generational imbalances and territorial asymmetries.
However, the moment of completing studies traditionally marks a turning point toward geographical dispersion. According to the graduate survey conducted by the University of Évora in 2018, 32.2% of respondents indicated the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon as their main destination for professional integration, while only 23.3% managed to settle professionally in the district of Évora, inverting the proximity logic expected for the welcoming institution.
This deflection trend is accentuated at more advanced levels of education, as demonstrated by the same 2018 University of Évora study. In the 3rd cycle of studies, corresponding to doctorates, the proportion of recent graduates working in Lisbon reached an expressive 35.3%, a figure that largely doubles the 17.6% of PhD holders who managed to remain working in the district of Évora after defending their theses.
The internal asymmetries of Central Alentejo
salidasThe departure of graduates is reflected in a municipal fabric that is deeply aged and unequal in socioeconomic terms. According to the 2021 Census by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the Central Alentejo sub-region globally recorded 220.2 elderly people for every 100 young people, a scenario where the municipality of Évora stood out in a slightly more favorable way with an aging index of 173 elderly people for every 100 young people.
In terms of salary compensation, the gap between municipalities in the same sub-region helps explain the inability to retain qualified assets. According to data gathered by PORDATA together with GEP/MTSSS for 2023, the highest average monthly earnings were recorded in the municipality of Évora at 1,289.50 euros, while the lowest value was recorded in the municipality of Mourão, standing at 937.00 euros.
This drop in demographic dynamism is not recent, having deep structural roots in the region. The 2021 Census by the National Statistics Institute (INE) shows that, in the decade between 2011 and 2021, all municipalities in the Alentejo region lost more than 10% of their resident population, with the exception of Évora and Vendas Novas, whose demographic drops remained contained at around 5%.
The divergence between schools and the institutional response
The capacity to retain highly qualified labor varies strongly depending on the graduates' academic area of origin. The 2018 University of Évora graduate survey reveals that only 28.8% of graduates from the School of Arts and 44.4% from the School of Social Sciences managed to maintain professional activity in Alentejo, contrasting sharply with the Nursing School, where the local retention rate reached 50.0%.
In an attempt to reverse this trend of brain drain, regional entities have tried to build bridges for strategic cooperation. On July 5, 2024, the Intermunicipal Community of Central Alentejo (CIMAC) established the Regional Contact Point for the Regressar Program, an initiative documented by the Emigration Observatory in 2024, with the primary objective of capturing and supporting the return of graduates and technical staff to the region.
At the interuniversity level, the commitment to regional cooperation translated, in 2021, into the creation of the Campus Sul consortium by the Universities of Évora, Nova de Lisboa, and Algarve. The agreement, formalized in 2021, aimed to design joint educational offerings and structured knowledge transfer programs to try to retain qualified human capital south of the Tagus River.
The fallacy of the lack of jobs and the weight of family
The most immediate and intuitive reading would point to galloping youth unemployment as the main driver of this academic diaspora, suggesting that young people abandon Évora immediately due to the absolute inability of the local market to absorb new labor. However, official indicators regarding the labor market refute this simplistic premise, revealing a surprisingly robust employability scenario for higher education.
According to combined data from the Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics (DGEEC) and IEFP for 2024, the registered unemployment rate for public higher education graduates in Portugal stood at 2.4%, reaching the lowest level in the last nine years nationwide. In the specific case of the University of Évora, the internal monitoring system set the internal registered unemployment rate of its graduates enrolled in IEFP at 3.4% in 2024.
If unemployment does not push young people out, what motivates their departure? The 2018 University of Évora graduate survey clarifies that, among graduates who choose not to work in Alentejo, 31.8% point to the distance from their original family unit as the main reason for leaving. Added to these factors is the national context of overqualification, which, according to the José Neves Foundation, worsened from 19.9% in 2021 to 22.4% in 2022, pushing many graduates into roles below their qualifications in large urban centers.
The generational portrait in the national and European context
The drain of professionals from Central Alentejo is part of a demographic and economic dynamic of national and community scope. According to data released by Eurostat and the José Neves Foundation in 2023, the proportion of young people aged 25 to 34 with completed higher education reached 44.4% in Portugal, surpassing for the first time the global average of the European Union, set at 42.0% for the same reference period.
Simultaneously, the relative weight of highly qualified workers in the 25 to 34 age group soared from 29.1% in 2011 to an expressive 47.0% in 2022 of the total employed youth in Portugal, according to statistical records from INE and the José Neves Foundation in 2023. However, this academic valuation collides with structural emigration: the Emigration Observatory found in 2024 that about 30% of young Portuguese aged 15 to 39 born in the country currently reside outside the national territory.
For the territory of Central Alentejo, where INE estimates indicate that the national aging index rose from 178.3 elderly people per 100 young people in 2021 to 188.8 elderly people per 100 young people in 2025, each graduate who crosses the sub-regional border toward the coast represents the loss of a critical resource. The equation is no longer centered on the mere scarcity of jobs, but rather focuses on salary attractiveness, family proximity, and the compatibility between the qualifications obtained and the functions offered in the interior municipalities.