As in Hong Kong, the university is also seeking to consolidate its alumni network to help foster the development of a culture of giving in the community, he said.

The former Portuguese colony has come a long way in raising the educational level of its people. Now 70 per cent of its secondary school graduates go on to higher education, because of the rapid development of the sector in the 1990s.

Macau has seen an influx of gamblers from the mainland since the opening of the American-invested Sands Casino in May, but Professor Iu, a member of the enclave's Education Committee and Science and Technology Council, doesn't consider the thriving gambling business will undermine the role of higher learning, nor the government's support for it.

'The concept that university education will help people get challenging jobs should be changed, as our Chief Executive Edmond Ho Hau-wah has also said. A university degree is becoming a basic qualification. The quality of citizenship here will be raised further if more people receive university education,' he said.

'There are few jobs in the high-tech area. But there is a need for professionals in various fields like accounting, personnel management and engineering. Casinos need both frontline and high-level management staff. It may be more difficult for Chinese language graduates to find a job, but they can work as secretaries.'

He said 70 per cent of the university's graduates found jobs that matched their specialties.

Professor Iu doesn't expect all of the university's 450 law students, enrolled in either Chinese and Portuguese programme, to become legal professionals. Similarly, history graduates could be frontline workers in any field, he said.

'During a visit to a university in The Netherlands some years ago, I was surprised to find that its law school produced 700 graduates a year. I asked the people there whether they needed that many lawyers and the reply was they did not expect all of them to become lawyers.'

Also in Macau, he added, university graduates were less selective about their careers because of the more fluid employment system there. He explained: 'We follow the European continental system under which there are various grades to say a clerical post. Those at upper grades do more than just clerical duties.'

The university, however, is offering incentives for local students to pursue higher learning. It has embarked on an expansion project involving the building of an extra academic building and a 22-storey student hostel on its Taipa Island campus, which will also be used to accommodate participants at next year's East Asian Games.

At the start of the academic year, scholarships were presented to more than 100 students with outstanding performance in their degree studies, worth in excess of $1 million. UM also waives the first-year tuition of school graduates recommended by their principals and who are among the top 10 per cent of students in their school. Scholarships are available to top mainland students too.

One-fifth of its student body of 5,000 is at the postgraduate level. 'We are hoping to broaden our students' exposure by having more graduate students from overseas,' Professor Iu said.

At the undergraduate level, plans are afoot to increase student exchanges, in line with what institutions elsewhere are pushing for, and following a pilot agreement signed with Baptist University, under which five students from each side would spend a semester at the other institution.

Professor Iu himself benefited from wide exposure, having obtained his first qualification from the former Baptist College prior to a master's degree from the University of Southampton.

Later he obtained a PhD in nonlinear vibration of multi-layer sandwich beams and plates from the University of Hong Kong, where he worked for a year as a researcher in the 1980s.

He decided to return to his roots in the late 1980s, taking up a teaching appointment at the then University of East Asia, the predecessor of UM before it became a publicly-funded institution in 1991.

He helped set up the civil engineering programme and taught undergraduate and postgraduate programmes there, serving as dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering in the late 1990s, prior to being appointed rector months before Macau's handover to China in 1999.

It was a last-minute decision for him to come to Hong Kong to study, he recalled. Macau students have traditionally opted for studies at mainland and Taiwanese institutions because the four-year university system there fits in with the six-year secondary school system in the enclave.

'I was dumb,' he said lightly. 'I had wanted to go to the States but did not realise the deadline for applications had passed when I expressed my wish to my parents. So I applied to Hong Kong instead.

'I learned a lot in Hong Kong. Although I only had a diploma, I managed to pass the three-month probation period at the University of Southampton to become qualified for the master's studies there.'

But he does not think Macau students will forsake the enclave for Hong Kong, especially should the fees exceed $60,000.

'Students may want to go to overseas countries such as Australia to get different exposure for that amount,' he said, adding: 'Macau people are more easily contented. Many students will be willing to stay here provided there are the opportunities.'