Scilight Press

The marketization of higher education has become a global trend. As a micro-economy, Macao faces unique quality assurance challenges in the marketization transition of its higher education system. Based on the market mechanism theory, this study constructs a three-dimensional evaluation index system of “market accountability mechanism—market competition mechanism—market feedback mechanism”, aiming to explore the core influencing factors and optimization paths for the quality assurance of higher education in Macao from the perspective of marketization transition. This study employs a questionnaire survey method and conducts empirical research on 522 undergraduate students from 4 universities in Macao. The results show that: (1) Under the background of marketization, the overall evaluation score of students on the quality of higher education in Macao is 3.70 on a 5-point scale; (2) Three factors, namely external evaluation (β = 0.902, p < 0.001), inter-institutional competition (β = 0.225, p < 0.001) and intra-institutional competition (β = −0.230, p < 0.001), have a significant impact on the evaluation of higher education quality in Macao under the marketization background; 3. The prediction accuracy rate of the GA-BP model for quality satisfaction reaches 90.036%, which is higher than that of the traditional BP model (89.193%) and shows a better fitting effect. Based on the research results, the optimization paths for the quality assurance of higher education in Macao proposed in this study can provide empirical basis for the institutional restructuring of Macao’s higher education in the process of marketization transition, and also offer reference for the improvement of higher education quality in similar regions.