Students call for reform

"Malta's university has endured several centuries of war and political upheaval. But as school begins this fall it faces a hardship of a different kind: nowhere to sit.

"Many of the university's 20,000 students will attend classes under circus tents hastily erected to accommodate massive overcrowding... at least they have a roof over their heads; at the university's law school, with an enrolment of more than 1,000, students must call ahead to reserve a seat in the lecture halls. Those who don't get in often stand outside and peer through the windows, even in the rain, hoping to overhear at least some of the lecture."

This was the fictitious scenario painted last week by Anthony Camilleri, the Education Commissioner of the University Students' Council (KSU), as he asked a KSU higher education conference on ensuring academic excellence to consider a possible newspaper report on freshers' week 10 years from now.

It may sound slightly extreme, he said in his paper on "sustainable higher education". But it has already happened elsewhere. It was how Newsweek reported the predicament at Rome's La Sapienza university - "a warning to campuses Europe-wide of the dire results of failing to ensure the sustainability of their higher education systems".

With its solitary university, it would be disastrous for students, the country and the economy were this situation ever to happen in Malta, said Mr Camilleri.

To make education sustainable, policy-makers had to find a way to continue to increase student numbers without compromising the quality of education, in the face of the government's already strained finances.

The institutional structure of the university needed to be reformed, he said. The structure had remained practically unchanged since 1988, when the student population numbered mere hundreds. It needed to be made more efficient, accountable and transparent.

"Our call for reform is often misinterpreted as misplaced youthful rebellion against the system. I would counter that it emanates not so much from a dissatisfaction with the current system than the realisation that socio-economic realities are dictating new circumstances to us all.

"Malta is a signatory of the Bologna Process, which will create a European Higher Education Area by the year 2010. As practically any local businessman could now tell you, entry into the common economic market has forced Maltese companies to reform, and entry into what might be termed as the education common market will necessitate the same amount of reform, for many of the same reasons."

Mr Camilleri said Malta also seemed to be falling victim to graduate unemployment. And job seekers now faced competition from both Malta and abroad.

"Outsourcing, work-from-home, per-contract work and free movement of workers across borders are redefining the very concept of employment... It is only by opening its doors up to industry and commerce, despite the inherent dangers that this brings with it, that the university can hope to keep step with the rapid pace of development in these sectors, and thus ensure that its graduates are one step ahead of the competition."

He also called on the university to be at the forefront in opening up new areas of study and research, and to provide trained graduates even in experimental areas of commerce.

"The failures of not following such a policy are obvious for all to see. While we have multitudes of unemployed graduates in certain areas of study, in others such as information technology, pharmaceuticals and certain areas of engineering, we are woefully short of graduates.

"Worse and worse, we have made a complete fool of ourselves on a European scene by not being able to find enough talented people to even translate our national languages into each other, let alone foreign languages into one of our national one. Each one of these cases should be considered as a failure of the university to exploit a niche whose use was apparent years before the demand increased."

Although an amount of caution was necessary in higher education, lack of innovation would lead to stagnation, he argued.

He also called for more emphasis on "a culture of quality". A quality assurance committee that met once every two months, plus some external examiners and an occasional academic audit were, in his view, inadequate. With only one university, anything less than aiming to be the "best in Europe" with regard to quality assurance would be unfair to a Maltese student who might not have any options for study abroad, he said.

"I ask how a member of staff at the rank of professor is allowed repeatedly to get away with shamefacedly flouting university regulations by issuing results over a year late without even a letter of censure. Is this our level of quality? Is this our level of accountability? I think this fact alone is enough to discourage any foreign student (or Maltese student if he had a choice) from choosing the University of Malta if the fact becomes more publicly known."

KSU president Justin Fenech and secretary general Paul Gonzi complained bitterly at the end of the conference about the poor participation by the university's top officials.

"We are not viewed as stakeholders, despite their lip service to the idea," said Mr Fenech.

Mr Gonzi said: "They complain about the lack of student participation, and then don't even stay to listen to what we have to say, while others don't even bother to turn up."