In April, the Minister for Education presented a consultation document for a University of Malta Act. The idea is innovative in that it proposes legislation that would address the university specifically, rather than education generally. In what follows I shall assume that the proposal is in good faith. Conspiracy theory aside, there is no reason to think otherwise.
But first, a caveat. I have a personal stake in the matter. I am employed by the university, and I head a department in the Faculty of Arts. For some, this will mean a conflict of interest and a compromise of opinion. I prefer to think of it as an insider commentary, and hopefully no less useful for that reason.
It may not be immediately obvious why what happens at university is of interest to those who do not work or study there. That one’s easily sorted. Much as I dislike the burdensome adjective, the University of Malta is as close as it gets to a national institution. It’s almost entirely funded by taxpayers, who have a right to know where their money is going. Besides, the university controls and supplies the knowledge and bits of paper that very many people think of as essential vehicles for personal aspiration and access to resources.
The proposed Act has been described by some as an assault on the autonomy of the university. I tend to share their view. It may be merely an echo of what has happened in many other countries since the 1970s, but it is an assault nonetheless, and one that stands to impoverish the institution at that.
To understand why this is so, it is important first to look at some of the offices within the university’s structure. The rector is to all intents and purposes the top manager and decision maker. They have a major say in important academic matters, and is also expected to have and push a programme for the institution’s development more broadly.
The rector is elected by council, the supreme governing body that also includes a large number of government appointees. Logically, the conclusion is that the rector is effectively appointed by government. So much for autonomy, one might say, but first impressions can be deceptive.
Thing is, the rector is typically an academic of professorial rank. What this means is that, while they are appointed by government, they are never entirely of government. Fundamentally, the rector remains part of the academic body. So much so, that it is common for holders of the office to retain some of their teaching and research duties.
Take Juanito Camilleri, who was first appointed by government bulldozer in top gear. By all accounts, he turned out to be tremendously worthy of his office in too many ways than can be described here. Perhaps the crucial one was that, managerial drive and all, Camilleri never forgot that he was an academic. On the occasions when I had to relate to him as my boss, we would invariably also discuss shared scholarly interests as peers.
I don’t much mind that the rector is appointed by government. What matters is that the top job be held by an academic, whose loyalty is also to their discipline and peers. This sees to it that the university remains true to its scholarly purpose.
If the proposed Act went through, the rector would become a boffin in a gown
It also ensures a balance of power, not least since the rector’s decisions often involve two other offices. Deans, also typically professors, are elected by and accountable to the academic members of their faculties. For their part, heads of department are appointed following formal consultation with the members of the department. The upshot is that, from the rector to individual academics, university is at the same time a top-down and bottom-up structure. It has some of the qualities of a fellowship, and it is partly these qualities that give it its autonomy.
Which is why an attack on the rector, deans and heads of department is also one on the university’s autonomy. Among other things, the proposed Act would effectively limit the rector’s power to academic matters. Deans and heads would not be allowed to serve for more than two terms. (Never mind that the point of elections is for voters to choose who they like as many times as they like.)
The problem is that it is scarcely possible to separate academic matters from non-academic ones. In order for the academic fellowship to do its job, it depends on things like funding, buildings and precincts, and services. It is no coincidence that the scale model of the university buildings and grounds sits outside the office of the rector. If the proposed Act went through, the rector would become a boffin in a gown, unable to do much if not by appointment to non-academic bureaucrats and government stooges.
There’s a second, deeply disturbing thing about the proposed legislation. Funding, and teaching/research profiles, would be linked directly to “social development and aspirations” and industry’s “needs”. Programmes given priority would be “relevant to social and labour market needs, and the strengthening of partnerships between higher education, business and the research sector”.
There are two big problems here, both of which have to do with the autonomy and the very raison d’être of the university. First, academics’ primary loyalty is to their disciplines, not to the market, social aspirations, or whatever else. This may involve studying things the market has no interest in. I think we can safely assume the market is not big on, say, astrophysics, or the anthropology of kinship.
Perhaps more radically, scholarship may – and often does – involve questioning the market, as opposed to seeing to its ‘needs’. While universities can and often do happily pair up with markets and social aspirations, they cannot do so as their main calling. Or rather they can, if governments demote them to technical colleges and echo chambers.
Second, the proposed Act ascribes a passive, reactive role to the university. If we must link the university to the market, the whole point is for it to be creative about markets and industries that may exist, rather than to see to the needs of those that already do. There was no market for cultural management when various humanities fields were introduced in the 1990s. Now, many of those who graduated with what must have seemed like zilch prospects, hold useful, profitable jobs.
It makes sense for government to insist that the university be accountable to the taxpayers who fund it. Except it ought to be so as a university, rather than as the business or the supermarket that it isn’t.
mafalzon@hotmail.com