Education | USJ renews hopes to have mainland students

USJ rector Peter Stilwell

The University of Saint Joseph is looking forward to becoming accredited by the British Accreditation Council (BAC), as well as obtaining the Chinese government’s approval to allow the school to recruit mainland students, USJ rector Peter Stilwell told the Times on Friday at the sidelines of the USJ 2018/2019 Community Scholarships and Fellowships Award Ceremony.

Talking to the Times about USJ’s plans for the future, the rector said “we would like, as normal, to be able to recruit some students from mainland China.”

“Our request was submitted in November. We know it is being processed. We are waiting to see what mainland China’s government considers […] given that we are a Catholic university,” said Peter Stilwell.

Questioned about when the school is expecting to hear an answer from mainland China, the USJ rector responded with uncertainty.

“I’m not sure. Because it’s not just a simple institutional question. It also has to do with wider considerations. I’m sure that China’s government is not looking at us individually, they are looking at us in a context, so it depends on their own policy and decisions,” explained Stilwell.

USJ is the only local higher education institution not allowed to enroll mainland students.

The school is looking forward to enrolling master’s students from mainland China.

“Because we believe that that is where we would have the strength for our university for master’s students,” said Stilwell.

In addition to the aim of enrolling more students from mainland China, the school is currently getting an accreditation from BAC.

“At the moment, we are preparing for accreditation. […] We would like to get accreditation by the BAC […] that depends on whether the local authorities consider that our agency is appropriate for doing assessment here in Macau,” Stilwell revealed. 

Currently, USJ has a total of 1,400 to 1,500 students, but the school is hoping to expand.

“We intend to grow, and what we have noticed in the last two years is that our master’s programs are growing faster than our bachelor’s programs, which is not surprising because we know our bachelor’s programs have a big limitation as there is a decrease in the number of students coming from Macau secondary schools, and also that they are being attracted by scholarships from mainland China, so there are fewer and fewer students,” the USJ rector told the Times.

“But the fact that our master’s programs are growing is a sign of confidence in USJ that we are providing not only the basic higher education, but we are providing higher level master’s and doctoral education,” the rector added.

According to the USJ rector, this marks the first year the school received more new master’s students than new bachelor students.

Regarding the scholarship this year, 53 undergraduate students received a total of 56 scholarships and fellowships donated by different organizations and individuals amounting to MOP689,000.