Let us celebrate!

Let us all celebrate with pride and joy this week the graduation of almost 2,600 students in so many areas of achievement. The celebrations started at St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta with a solemn Mass celebrated by Archbishop Mercieca, whose learned homily stimulated all new graduates to contribute all their gained abilities altruistically to all those in need.

Others who were gaining their second, post-graduate qualification, could not fit in St John's. However they also felt the need to celebrate and to give thanks to the Almighty for so many gifts received during these years of study, and certainly for the opportunity of developing their intellect. This celebration was held at St Paul Shipwrecked church.

Graduation is the time to celebrate for staff and graduates and their families. It is a culmination of reaching an aim, that of being certified as having reached a certain standard of knowledge, very often in a specific area, and that now one is ready to contribute to society from the knowledge which one has acquired.

Those who finished their undergraduate courses may be inspired by revisiting physically their Alma Mater after a couple of months of absence. The University is open for post-graduate studies and for lifelong education.

Some feel that the post-graduate degree programmes at our University should play second fiddle to the under-graduate courses. It is sometimes forgotten that these programmes are essential for the University to carry out one of its most significant and essential tasks - research.

Some academics show an inferiority complex in trumpeting the achievements of our University. In reality however the research carried out in our Ph.D. programmes not only always reaches the standards demanded of institutions of high reputation but very often surpasses them. The government should make it clear that it recognises postgraduate qualifications awarded by our University no less than those acquired elsewhere.

It is sad that while certain government heads of departments find little difficulty in releasing their staff for a year or two to continue their studies abroad, they find objections of all sorts to release them for a few hours to carry out post-graduate studies at our University.

Labour MP Evarist Bartolo has mentioned how students from the Malta College of Science and Technology (MCAST) may find it much easier to be accepted for a course of studies in a foreign university than at our university. Although this may be true for under-graduate courses, one should keep in mind that some foreign universities, including a number in the UK, are accepting foreigners as students at all costs (because the financial survival of the institutions is greatly helped though the tuition fees paid by foreign students).

It is however true that students wishing to join post-graduate courses at our University often face unreasonable hurdles. Cases have been reported where a British university would admit a Maltese student who had obtained a third-class classification in Malta to read for a Ph.D. which is then completed in a shorter period than the minimum allowed in Malta.

The British may perhaps be making a mockery of their post-graduate research programmes and these universities are doing a disservice to those who in the past have worked really hard to obtain a Ph.D. from a British institution. Yet in Malta we do tend sometimes to go to the other extreme. It appears that while we tend to admit students at undergraduate level to the professional courses with very low grades at A-level, especially in the science-based courses, sometimes lower than any of the British universities, we do tend to create excessive hurdles to register students for post-graduate degrees.

This is often seen to be the case in the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. The transit of an application from Faculty boards and Senate committees to Ethics Committee then to University and nationally appointed Clinical Trials Committees and then back to the department special committee is not the right way to attract post-graduate students and to encourage our newly qualified graduates with a first degree to continue their studies in Malta.

We congratulate all new graduates, both those who obtained their first degree and also those who obtained their well deserved Master's and doctorates.