Instituto Industrial E Comercial de Lisboa - 1974: Birth of ISEL

1974: Birth of ISEL

In 1974 it was converted into the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), providing higher education, and becoming part of the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa in the 1980s, a grouping of higher education polytechnic schools. It conferred the professional title of engenheiro técnico (technical engineer), a title conferred after a three-year course; the degree was known as bacharelato. In those times, a full chartered engineer (Engenheiro) in Portugal used to have a compulsory five-year course known as licenciatura which was granted exclusively by universities. Only engineers having the licenciatura diploma, graduated at the universities, were capacitated to develop any kind of project in engineering and were universally recognized by the Engineers Association of Portugal (Ordem dos Engenheiros).

Today, after many reforms and changes in higher education occurred since 1998 to the 2000s, the formal differences between polytechnic and university licenciatura degrees in engineering are in general null, and due to the Bologna process both graduates should be recognized equally all across Europe. However, there are many engineering courses whose degrees are still not recognized by the Ordem dos Engenheiros (the highest Portuguese authority in accreditation of professional engineers), especially those engineering courses conferred by several polytechnical institutes and many private institutions.