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university, the University of East Asia, in Macau was not built until 1981. Right now
there are 10 postsecondary schools of different orientations and sizes.
Research on Macau’s higher education is comparable to its history: intermittent,
spotty, and stumbling, and its research community atomized and dispersed.
Nonetheless, available research in higher education in Macau does present many of
the issues and problems that are manifest in other geographical areas, such as the
mission of higher education, whether it meets the needs of the society where it is
located, higher education management, institutional autonomy, public and private
divide of the higher educational institutions (HEI), the funding of the institution, the
role of the professors in governance, etc. This paper attempts to describe (1) the his-
tory of higher education in Macau, (2) the findings from the current research on
higher education, and (3) what needs to be done in the future.
A Brief History of Higher Education in Macau
When higher education in Macau is discussed in the literature, researchers will inevita-
bly mention the College of St. Paul (sometimes called the St. Paul University College).
Indeed, this is the first HEI in Macau established by the Jesuits shortly after the
Portuguese settled in the territory. It was a Catholic school financed by the Portuguese
King and the city senate and supplemented by donations from other Catholics and lay
people (Li Xiangyu 2001 :109). The size of the college was small, usually with fewer
than 100 students, and fewer than 10 teachers (Li Xiangyu 2001 :137–39). The college
did teach languages, including Latin, Japanese and Chinese, theology, philosophy, eth-
ics, and arts. Later they added natural science subjects like physics, astronomy, and
medicine (Li Xiangyu 2001 :79–87). It was closed in 1762 because the Jesuits were
arrested and transported to Portugal as a result of the Rites controversy.
Somehow the Portuguese Macau government did not establish an HEI in the next
200 years. In 1900–1904, Gezhi College, the predecessor of Lingnan University,
moved to Macau but it did not last long. And then around the 1950s, some Chinese
scholars established Huaqiao (overseas) University (1950), Huanan (South China)
University (1950), Yuehai Wen Shang (humanities and business) College (1949),
and Zhongshan College of Education (Zhongshan Jiaoyu Xueyuan) (1950). But
they did not last long either partly because the Portuguese Macau government did
not allow them to register, and apparently there was not enough social support.
Students then had to go elsewhere for their college education (Lau Sin Peng 2002 ;
Ma Zaoming 2010a). In 1981, some Hong Kong businessmen were able to convince
the Macau government to allow them to establish the University of East Asia (UEA).
Although two-thirds of the students were from Hong Kong, at least Macau students
now had a choice to go to a local university. But if the College of St. Paul was more
of a humanities school featuring theology, UEA was mainly a market-oriented and
commercialized business school (Ma Zaoming 2010a: 33).
This did not change until 1988 when the government purchased UEA and later
changed its name into the University of Macau (UM). Humanities, science and tech-
Z. Hao