Elísio Estanque
João Arriscado Nunes

University dilemmas and challenges: Social recomposition and student expectations at the University of Coimbra
In the last decades, the system of higher education in Portugal has gone through profound changes, which are largely related to the democratization of access to the university. With the rapid expansion and the increasing strength of the market, higher education has revealed new contradictions and now faces new challenges. Drawing on the results of a survey of University of Coimbra students, the authors seek to analyze and discuss the ongoing changes at the level of student expectations and representations and their repercussions in the redefinition of the university's mission.

Fernando Luís Machado
António Firmino da Costa
Rosário Mauritti
Susana da Cruz Martins
José Luís Casanova
João Ferreira de Almeida

Social classes and university students: origins, opportunities, and orientations
Given the importance of schooling/education in the configuration of contemporary social inequalities, the authors analyze the unequal probabilities of access to university based on the results of a recent survey of a representative sample of Portuguese university students. The research is guided by a set of theoretical and operative proposals related to the sociological analysis of social classes.

Aníbal Frias

Student rituals and university cultures in Coimbra. The logic of traditions and identity dynamics
Based on the exemplary case of Coimbra, this paper describes and analyzes student and university cultures in Portugal within a methodological, social, and historical framework that allows the apprehension of the close connections between the student body and the university as two indissociable, although autonomous, worlds.

Marcos Ribeiro Mesquita

The Brazilian student movement: militant practices from the viewpoint of the new social movements
The author analyzes the relationships among the various organized groups that comprise the student movement, ranging from the most institutionalized to those that prefer non-institutionalized ways to take part in
politics. The plurality of student expressions, their new forms, new methods, and new issues support the hypothesis that there really is such a new sociability, despite the strong traditional character that the institutionalized student movements still hold.

Rui Bebiano

The city and memory in student intervention at Coimbra
The author seeks to show how the systematic loss of collective memory has always undermined the strength of student actions by presenting a brief historical survey of some of the decisive moments of claimsmaking on the part of Coimbra students. He focuses on the gradual assertion of a student subculture with an increasing autonomy and a relative openness to spaces beyond the city and its university.