Macao's oldest university, the University of Macao, is expecting a booming future as its new campus will be built in three years, said its rector Prof. Wei Zhao Tuesday.

    The new campus will cover an area of 1.09 square km on Hengqin Island, which is about 200 meters away from Macao but under the administration of neighboring Zhuhai city of Guangdong Province.

    The new campus will be isolated from the rest part of Hengqin Island. A tunnel will be built to connect the two campuses so that the students and faculty will not need to go through the border procedure between Macao and the mainland, Zhao said.

    "It will settle the problem the university long had," Zhao said. "The shortage of land had restrained it from further development."

    The university, now having nearly 6,600 students, only occupies about 0.05 square km of land in Macao.

    Each student only takes up 8 square meters of land in average, far below the national standard of 67 square meters.

    This June, China's top legislature gave the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) jurisdiction over part of the land on Hengqin Island, assigned for the university's new campus, under a lease for 40 years.

    "It was a good example of flexibility and vitality of the policy of 'one country, two systems,'" Zhao said.

    With the new campus, the university will be able to hold 10,000 students.

    "We will have more departments and programs. It will not only be a good opportunity for our university but also for Macao," Zhao said.

    "Macao considered the construction of the new campus as an opportunity to improve local higher education service," said Edmund Ho Hau Wah, chief executive of Macao SAR in his report on the work of SAR government on Nov. 18.

    In the past decade since Macao returned to the motherland, the region's higher education has improved with the economic growth.

    The region, with an area of less than 30 square km, now has ten universities and colleges, according to the Tertiary Education Services Office of Macao SAR.

    Ten years ago, about 8,500 students studied in colleges in Macao and the figure rose to 32,000 this year, while the number of the faculty increased from 738 to 1,951.

    More than 70 percent of the teachers in Macao's public-funded universities has the doctor's degree.

    With more investment, the number of students covered by the government scholarship in the 2008-2009 academic year doubled from the 1999-2000 year, enabling more children in poor families to go to college.

    "Higher education is no longer a privilege for the elite but gradually becomes the service to common people," Zhao said.