According to the final results of the Census released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the percentage of the resident population with higher education was 13.9% in 2011 and reached 19.8% among people aged 15 or over in 2021, representing a total of 1,782,888 individuals.

Added to these data is the growing share of people with secondary and post-secondary education, which increased from 16.7% to 24.7% in the last decade.

In terms of areas of study in higher education, the most frequent were “Business sciences, administration and law”, with 21.8%, and “Health and social protection”, with 15.2%.

Conversely, the area of “Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and veterinary sciences” represented only 2% of people with higher education last year.

In terms of education, the 2021 Censuses also point to a reduction in the illiteracy rate of the population to 3.1%, corresponding to 292,809 individuals aged at least 10 years without knowing how to read or write, when in 2011 this indicator had a rate of 5.2 % of the population over 10 years old.

How much does Portugal spend on each child for education? click to find out.