189faculty in five of the ten colleges and universities in Macau, 30–40% in four of
them, and only the University of Macau has fewer part-time faculty, but it still has
12% of them. The faculty, administrators, and policymakers all need to realize that
college teaching as a profession needs a great deal of academic credentials, aca-
demic freedom, autonomy, and above all a calling. How to train graduate students
who will be the future teachers in the profession needs to be studied. Once they are
on the job, how can they prevent de-professionalization under the influence of cor-
poratization and commercialization? If they are de-professionalized, how can they
be re-professionalized? Here is one example.
If we view full-time employment as a greater amount of job security, and a PhD
degree as an indication of greater professionalization, more than a third of college
and university faculty in Macau have less job security and about a half are not pro-
fessionalized to a great extent. Does this mean that the part-time faculty and those
without a PhD do not enjoy the kind of professional autonomy and academic free-
dom they are supposed to enjoy? Of course, one can also argue that even full-time
faculty do not have job security and do not enjoy a great deal of academic freedom,
since there is no tenure system in Macau. This is evidenced when two full-time
professors were dismissed in 2014 partly because of their political views and with-
out due process, as I mentioned above (Zhidong Hao 2014 ). If full-time faculty with
PhDs can be dismissed without due process, one can imagine what part-time faculty
may experience in terms of the amount of academic freedom and professional
autonomy. But these issues of professionalization and academic freedom have to be
studied.
Fourth, researchers have to continue to study on how higher education in Macau
can maintain its autonomy and find its niches in a globalized world. Bray et al.
( 2002 ); Chen Wei ( 2010 ); Hu Weiquan and Chen Qinlan ( 2011 ); Wu Jinting and
Vong Sou Kuan ( 2015 ); Yu Rushuang and Chen Xiaohong ( 2009 ); Wu Nan, Chen
Jian, and Liang Zhenhong ( 2014 ); and Yu Yuwen ( 2013 ) have all considered the
smallness of Macau and how Macau might find its niches in the globalized or glo-
calized world with the geographical, social, and political constraints. On the one
hand, Macau is situated in a prosperous part of China, and its economy based on
gambling revenues has been largely healthy despite occasional setbacks. It has a
history of East-West exchange, especially cultural and religious exchanges, that few
places in China can claim. Politically and socially Macau enjoys more freedoms
than in mainland China under the “one country, two systems” formula. But on the
other hand, the smallness of Macau also makes it vulnerable to external influences.
Macau is already facing a serious challenge of mainlandization economically, polit-
ically, and socially (see Hebert Yee 2009 ; Zhidong Hao 2014 ), and a competition for
global rankings (Zhidong Hao 2015a, b).
So the relationship between the government, society, and the university has to be
sorted out (Zhang Yunhong and Ma Zaoming 2009 ). So is the relationship between
Macau and mainland China, i.e., the political influence of mainland China on Macau
in its academic freedom. Does the mainland constraint on what university profes-
sors can say influence the freedom of speech on the part of professors in Macau (see
Zhidong Hao and Zhengyang Guo manuscript)? Are student organizations operated
10 What It Is Like and What Needs to Be Done: A Status Report on Higher Education...