For many years the Portuguese Ministry of Education used a funding formula to allocate the State budget to public higher education institutions. Some of its major objectives were higher enrolments and allocation equity. As the expenditure on salaries was a major component of the budget, the formula was supposed to force convergence to established standard staff/student ratios. This article analyses the evolution of staff numbers in Portuguese public universities to assess how successful the funding formula has been in forcing convergence to standard staff numbers.