The Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA) is a Portuguese Public Institution of Higher Education, with recognized quality. IPCA was founded in December 1994, aiming to offer an optional way of higher education to people from Braga district. In this way, according to deep researches that showed a lack of technical teaching in that region, the creation of a polytechnic institution of higher education was seen as the answer to the local economic and social needs. In October 1996 IPCA opened the doors to the first students: 74, divided between the Corporate Accountancy and the Accountancy and Public Finance courses, of the Management School. Now IPCA community has about two thousand students and over one hundred teachers, most of them holding Master or Doctorate Degrees, divided for two Schools:Thus, being its educational model focused on practice, IPCA wants to instruct professionals with adequate qualifications to the labour market. Its success is proved by a high employment rate of its students and an increasing number of applications taking IPCA courses as the first option.