Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Porto (reviews)

I spent three years at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. During this time I realized why it was the best university in Portugal. All the courses are very complete, integrating not only relevant theoretical parts, but also the practical part, which eventually gives us more experience to face the outside world.
However, this faculty has a lot of flaws when it comes to the space itself. The building needs work and more space for all the students who study there.

I like my college a lot. I feel happy there and will recommend it to my future children. What I like most is the teachers and the classes. Every Friday we have a get-together with college students.

The classes were too big and the curriculum should be updated more frequently. Professors tried their best, but some were not the greatest. Choosing your schedule is easy and offers more flexiblity. It’s well located.

The course itself (International Relations) is not bad but it falters when it comes to developed skills and its professors. It is very broad, in the sense that its subjects cover several fields (Economics, Laws, Foreign Languages, History and IR itself) but don’t end up deepening either of them. By the end of the course, one feels as if they haven’t really learned much if anything about international relations at all. For comparison, after a single year of a master’s program, I had a bigger understanding of the field and felt like I had learned considerably more than during my entire bachelor’s. The other major flaw of the course is the teaching staff. After 3 years and having classes with around 20 or more different professors, it’s possible to count on one hand those who effectively were able to motivate the students and demonstrate considerable knowledge and understanding of their respective teaching fields. Many of the remaining was disdainful towards the students and the assignments handed usually consisted in completing certain portions of the staff’s own research investigation for them. All in all, the course suffers due to its broadness and overall lack of quality staff. On the bright side, the mandatory 2 foreign language structure of the course seems to be efficient, with most students ending up being able to speak at least one if not both languages chosen to a considerable degree.