The University Fernando Pessoa was recognized as a public interest organization by the Portuguese State in July 1996 and it is the result of a pioneering higher education project initiated in the 1980s with the creation of two higher education institutes that provided its structural basis. Today, the University is organized in three faculties (Health Sciences, Human and Social Sciences, Science and Technology), one School of Health Sciences and one autonomous unit (Ponte de Lima College). Being a foundational University, UFP has never been market-oriented. It has managed to develop into a solid private higher education institution with a strong academic focus and a constant concern with quality maintenance and improvement in what concerns a highly qualified teaching staff, physical infrastructures and equipments and its teaching, research and extension project. The mission of University Fernando Pessoa is to provide high quality education services and to be an internationally recognized European teaching and research university, contributing to the promotion of private higher education as a public good, associated with private benefits and based on the over-arching principle of public responsibility