“This project will be a game changer,” Joseph Muscat pompously declared to the faithful in 2016. He was just duping them.
One year earlier, his economy minister, Chris Cardona signed an agreement with Jordanian investor Hani Salah to establish the euphemistically termed “American University of Malta”. Muscat boasted that the project would bring €115 million of investment and create 300 jobs.
The “university” would have five different faculties over two sites. It would recruit 1,000 students in the first year, increasing to 4,000 students in four years.
Those four years were up in April 2022. An external quality assurance exercise of the AUM was conducted in April 2022. That report showed that AUM had only 60 active students in three courses across different years.
Ten students were following a BSc Business Administration course, 23 a BSc Business and Finance course and 27 a Masters in Business Administration programme. The vast majority of those students were international students on scholarships.
Muscat’s empty promises of a game changing educational centre of excellence with 4,000 students that would revive the economy of the south was just a scam. Instead, AUM has a pitiful 60 students spread out over three courses – an irredeemable and unmitigated disaster.
But it’s not just student numbers that are appalling. The whole enterprise is bogus. This is no university. It’s barely a classroom.
The “university” has only five full-time faculty members. One of those five is the provost, the other is the acting dean (because there is no dean) and another lives in “a remote country due to visa issues”.
The so-called “university” conducts no research at all. The audit panel found “no evidence for research institutes or research labs of any kind” at AUM. The panel didn’t manage to find any institutional publication pool. There were no faculty publications on its website.
Research is an integral part of any university. But the panel couldn’t find the slightest trace of any AUM research.
There was far worse. The panel found no evidence that students with disabilities were given any help. They found that AUM “significantly lacks academic human resources”. The registrar is compelled to perform the work that should be done by academics, such as maintaining the student learning platform.
There are no modern teaching and learning tools available at AUM. Reading lists for students are outdated. Students have no access to data analysis software. There are no job descriptions or assigned responsibilities for either the dean, programme coordinators or the registrar. In fact, there are no programme coordinators at all.
The post for student affairs remains vacant. Because the number of students is so low, students from different years are put into the same class. Credits earned at the AUM cannot be transferred to any other institution because no other educational institution recognises AUM.
There is no formal procedure for students to submit their thesis in an online library. There is no maximum study duration limit, so students can stay in the course for as long as they like. Students who performed badly still passed because the weighting for exams is not in line with internationally recognised standards. All three courses provided at AUM failed in all subareas assessed by the audit panel.
Labour robbed the country of valuable land on a false pretext- Kevin Cassar
Despite the catastrophic performance of AUM on the External Quality Assurance process, the local regulatory authority, the MFHEA (Malta Further and Higher Education Authority) bizarrely concluded that “the results were satisfactory” and extended the AUM licence until 2027.
But the MFHEA had too much to hide. Despite its promises that it would make the report public before the five-year licence would be renewed, the MFHEA withheld publication of the External Quality Assurance report for months on end.
Education Minister Clifton Grima misled parliament, declaring that “the report was published on the MFHEA website”. He fooled most but not all. The Shift called the minister out, revealing that the audit report hadn’t been published at all. The MFHEA confirmed it hadn’t published the audit report but gave no reason why it was keeping it under wraps.
The MFHEA was finally compelled to publish that report on December 2, 2022, after The Shift lodged an FOI request.
The MFHEA could not publish that abysmal report without exposing Labour’s deception. It couldn’t publish that report without torpedoing Robert Abela’s plans to hand over more land to Sadeen at SmartCity.
On July 6, 2022, over two months after that audit was completed, Abela handed over 31,500 square metres of seafront public land at SmartCity to Sadeen. That land was estimated to be worth €63 million. Abela gave it to Sadeen at 47 cents per square metre.
Abela continued where Muscat left off. Despite Sadeen’s complete disaster, Abela still defended AUM. “The AUM project did not have a perfect start,” he declared in parliament in the understatement of the decade.
Labour robbed the country of valuable land on a false pretext. The promised 4,000 students never materialised. The €100 million investment never saw the light of day. Neither did the 300 jobs. Just 60 students, mostly on scholarships, constitute the entire active student cohort of the bogus “university”.
The whole outfit is a bankrupt joke.
Muscat swindled the nation with false pledges and gave away millions of euros worth of public land to a fraud. The MFHEA conveniently withheld publication of an utterly devastating AUM report, sparing Labour’s blushes and allowing Abela to strike an even more obscene deal with the Jordanian businessman.
Those seafront 31,500 square metres handed over to Sadeen come with no strings attached. That land can be used for any purpose Sadeen wishes – tourism, residential development or entertainment.
Abela had all the ammunition required in that report to kick Sadeen out and return Żonqor to the nation. AUM should never have had its licence extended, let alone receive huge tracts of public land.
That damning AUM report was conveniently kept secret until Labour’s dastardly deed was done.
Labour’s leaders change but Labour’s betrayal of the nation continues.