185it was meant to train professionals, although it began to develop into a comprehen-
sive university after the government bought it in 1988. The Macau Polytechnic
Institute (MPI) also emphasizes applied and technical disciplines, supplying Macau
with people with practical skills. MPI’s website states that it “is a public institution
of higher education with an emphasis on applied knowledge and skills.”^1 Indeed,
MPI has six schools, the names of which indicate their orientations: Languages and
Translation, Business, Public Administration, Physical Education and Sports, Arts,
and Health Sciences. The Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) is similar. It “offers
degrees and professional programmes in a wide range of tourism-related disciplines
such as hospitality, tourism business, heritage, events, retail and marketing, leisure
and entertainment, sports and recreation, creative and cultural studies, and culinary
arts.”^2 If the nursing school and the security force school are specifically built to
train professional and technical workers, then Macau Institute of Management and
Macau Millennium College are training only management personnel. In fact, even
if the UM, CityU, USJ, and MUST all seem to strive to be comprehensive universi-
ties, they have large programs of business administration and other applied
disciplines.
The question is then what the mission of a college or university is, and whether
it is enough to train only skilled workers and professionals. Do comprehensive
universities have enough courses on humanities and social sciences? Should non-
comprehensive universities, or polytechnics, also have humanity and social sci-
ence training for their students? The MUST has a general education program.
Should that be a way for other technical schools to deal with this problem? In their
study on higher education in Macau, Bray et al. ( 2002 :81–84) discuss in some
length about this binary system with universities on one hand and polytechnics on
the other. They suggest that the binary system be maintained, and MPI should not
be upgraded into a university. But even if that is the case, more humanities and
social sciences should be offered in polytechnics so that a university or college
graduate is equipped with a well-rounded training to be able to face with life’s
many challenges.
At any rate, the mission of the college or university and the vocationalization of
universities merit researcher’s serious attention. This is true not only with polytech-
nics but with universities as well. General education may be a must in both kinds of
institutions. I will also discuss below the issue of corporatization and
commercialization, which is related to the mission of the university and the problem
of vocationalization.
(^1) See MPI’s website at http://www.ipm.edu.mo/en/general_information.php, last accessed on
January 18, 2015.
(^2) See IFT’s website at http://www.ift.edu.mo/EN/information/Home/Index/126, last accessed on
January 18, 2015.
10 What It Is Like and What Needs to Be Done: A Status Report on Higher Education...