Over 1,000 University of Malta students have signed a petition to have a new compulsory study unit removed from their workload.
The Communication and Academic Skills Programme, or CASP, as it is better known has been dropped on the laps of first-year university students as a compulsory subject, which students say they were not informed about and was done “without their consent”.
At the time of writing on Wednesday, the petition had reached 1,223 signatures asking for the removal of the unit from their curriculum.
The petition claims that students were not informed that they would be obliged to complete this study unit during their second semester.
Furthermore, they said that the inclusion of CASP in their study schedule would see them exceed the recommended 60 ECTS credits to be obtained for the scholastic year.
“We haven't been informed about this study unit when we applied to this university, and it would exceed the recommended 60ECTS credits, causing many students to have severe difficulties focusing on the study units they have come to study at the University of Malta," the petition said.
“Not to mention the hassle they put us through to remove just one extra ECTS, and now we are subjected to an additional 8, which were forced upon us without our consent.”
They additionally claimed that while other universities in Europe allow students to graduate with 180ECTS, Maltese students must achieve 188ECTS.
“This is unfair, especially when last year's students did not attend the said course,” they said.
Campus student group SDM said that the inclusion of CASP would create issues for students, increasing hours on their timetable and the burden on their not insignificant workload.
Additionally, SDM said that a number of students have flagged that their specific courses already have a similar, if not identical study unit which teaches more or less the same skills as CASP.
According to the University’s website, CASP is aimed at equipping students with the skills needed to meet the expectations of their course and teach them to develop an academic voice.
“This new programme will help you find that voice, think critically and facilitate the development of effective communication through writing and presenting using both general and discipline-specific conventions,” the study unit’s description reads.
SDM has publicly asked the University to clarify the situation and is requesting that CASP becomes an optional study unit, rather than a compulsory one.
“We do not think it should be compulsory for everyone since everyone has different levels of learning and one shouldn’t be made to sit in lectures re-learning what they already know when they could be working on more preferred student units,” SDM said.
Student group Pulse similarly expressed concern that students were not fully informed on the implementation of the proficiency course and are about to be forced to attend lectures.
“The fact that non-attendance or failure in these units is reflected on the final certificate of the main course of study raises questions about their usefulness and fairness. This creates a situation where students are unfairly penalized for not attending or failing in optional units that are not directly related to their main course of study, and that they were not fully informed about,” they said.
“Pulse calls on the university administration to re-evaluate the CASP and ELP programs, to ensure full transparency in the presentation of these units to students, and to take necessary steps to ensure that language education is given the importance it deserves while protecting the accuracy and fairness of the final certificates of students in their main courses of study and reducing the stress levels of students.”
Times of Malta has contacted the University of Malta for comment.