Aiming to foster relations between the academic and business worlds, the AETC Consortium was born from the initiative of three higher education institutions: the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (coordinating institution), the Universidade do Algarve, and the Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo do Estoril. The Consortium also includes companies and other employers who, through their prestige and international contacts, facilitate the recruitment and placement of interns in the international job market, contributing to improved competitiveness and employability. The portfolio of participating companies and entities is constantly being updated.
Initially, AETC was focused on meeting the needs of students and recent graduates interested in undertaking an international internship. The Consortium initially prioritized sectors of the labor market related to cultural industries (traditional sectors of performing arts, visual arts, and cultural heritage, including cinema, DVD, film, television, radio, music, books, and press), as well as applied hospitality, airlines, travel agencies, tour operators, theme parks, and museums. The initial goal was to link these sectors with fields of study such as Communication Sciences, Applied Foreign Languages, and Foreign Cultures, aiming to establish connections with Tourism, a field that epitomizes multiculturalism.
In recent years, due to the growing interest of students from various schools of the partner HEIs in international internship mobility across different fields of knowledge, other sectors of the market have also been increasingly valued.
In more recent years, AETC has also started catering to other groups interested in international mobility as a means of personal and professional development within the framework of lifelong learning: teaching and non-teaching staff. Thus, in addition to professional internship mobility for students and recent graduates, AETC also provides staff mobility grants for teaching and/or training mobility.
