 The state-run polytechnic institutes ("Institutos Politécnicos") are governed by a President, and are groupings of superior schools ("escolas superiores") and institutes, in major cities these also include superior institutes ("institutos superiores").They have been created across the country after 1980.The fast expansion of the polytechnic institutes, whose entrance and teaching requirements before the mid-2000s were in general less demanding than the universities' criteria, was an administrative attempt to reduce the elevated rate of pre-higher education abandon and to increase the number of (under)graduates per one million inhabitants in Portugal which were dramatically below the European average (this does not imply that its students haven't become competent professionals).