Conditions attached to the university licence offered by the regulator to the Sadeen Group are non-negotiable, but the Jordanian company may have other plans.
Louai Twal, Sadeen’s legal representative, said the company was studying the conditions imposed by the National Commission for Further and Higher Education but indicated some form of compromise may be necessary.
The company applied for a university licence to build and operate the American University of Malta from campuses in Cospicua and Marsascala.
“Things do not always come in either yes or no… there is always plenty of space for discussion, and we believe we will be facing a reasonable authority, which will be willing to study any justified request made to it and get back with a solution,” Dr Twal told the Times of Malta yesterday.
He did not elaborate, insisting it was “too early” to speak about these issues, since the company was still formulating its reaction.
We believe we will be facing a reasonable authority, which will be willing to study any justified request made to it and get back with a solution
On Sunday, commission chairman Martin Scicluna said the 16 conditions, which included educational audits and financial commitments, were “not negotiable”.
The commission released the findings of a 14-month due diligence process last week. The ball is now in Sadeen’s court to accept the licence.
When it was pointed out that the commission considered the conditions to be non-negotiable, Dr Twal insisted that, if the reasons were justified, there should be no difficulties in the effort to reach an agreement.
Dr Twal said the company would react to the commission’s official letter in a few days’ time after evaluating the provisions in the licence offered to them.
“We understand that the commission is the regulatory body and it needs to make sure everything is done correctly, but as an entity we have a right to study each provision, check its legality and move forward accordingly,” Dr Twal said.
Asked whether the AUM was still on track with plans to start operating with the first 100 students by October, Dr Twal said the company was verifying whether this was possible. “Our intentions were to begin before that, but delays happened and there were things out of our hands which we had no control over. We are doing our best.”
The project was mired in controversy as soon as it was first announced by the Prime Minister in May last year, because 90,000 square metres of land in an outside development zone at Żonqor Point was earmarked for the campus.
The government eventually caved in to pressure, proposing a split campus. Part of the university will be located at Dock One in Cospicua, and the other campus will be on a reduced footprint in Marsascala, which will still take up 18,000 square metres of ODZ land.
The land transfer agreements were approved by Parliament in a marathon sitting last December and signed last March.
The Sadeen Group does not operate universities, and so the accreditation and licencing process was quite unique for the education authorities. The company enlisted the Chicago-based DePaul University to draw up the course programmes.
But after faltering in the first part of the due diligence exercise, Sadeen roped in Clemson University of South Carolina, to have a reputable academic institution carry out the annual audits requested by the commission.
Mr Scicluna confirmed that the inclusion of Clemson and the appointment of philosophy professor John Ryder as provost had signalled a turning point in the due diligence process.