© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 181
J. Jung et al. (eds.), Researching Higher Education in Asia, Higher Education in
Asia: Quality, Excellence and Governance, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4989-7_10
Chapter 10
What It Is Like and What Needs to Be Done:
A Status Report on Higher Education
in Macau and Its Research
Zhidong Hao
Abstract This paper examines what is happening in higher education in Macau,
what has been done in its research, and what more needs to be done in the future.
We find that higher education research in and about Macau is resembling its history:
short, atomized, dispersed, and sketchy. There are few in-depth studies in the form
of well-developed papers and books, and they tend to be in English; most are short
introductory papers published in Chinese venues in mainland China. And most
researchers are from outside Macau. Nonetheless, available research does point to
some very important issues such as the problem of vocationalization, the academic
and political roles of the professoriate, the professionalization, or the de- and re-
professionalization of faculty, among other things. We believe that future research
should deal with not only the above issues, but other issues as well such as the mis-
sion of higher education, the role of the government in higher education assessment
and quality control, student learning experiences, and the postcolonial mentality in
higher education development in Macau especially regarding the pursuit of world-
class statuses. Research on such issues is very much lacking. We hope that this
paper will shed light on the future development of higher education and its research
in Macau.
Macau is situated at the west of the Pearl River estuary opposite of Hong Kong at an
hour’s boat ride in the southern tip of China, and it has a population of over 600,000.
But this mini society has a semicolonial and colonial history of 450 years since
1553 before it was returned to China in 1999. There used to be a Catholic college,
the College of St. Paul, established by the missionaries in 1594, but it was closed in
1762 after 168 years. As we will discuss below, attempts to build colleges did not
succeed until about 200 years later in the early twentieth century. And the major
Z. Hao (*)
University of Macau, Macau SAR, China
e-mail: [email protected]