Supporting students and research

Clearly, an institution of higher education and research such as a university requires substantial and consistent funding to sustain high outputs and standards. The obligation appears to be mainly that of the state. Then again, a small fee could help to strengthen the commitment of both staff and students rather than merely to defray costs.

Supporting the students is another matter. Every developed or well- resourced country, as we pretend to be, supports its students in higher education in a variety of ways. There are fellowships or scholarships, grants or loans. Fellowships support students who bring in a commendable involvement to the institution; in culture, sport, the arts or sciences and other activities among the academic community. Scholarships demand reward strictly on academic merit. We have opted for a "stipend" or "maintenance grant".

Our student support has come under fire lately because some have suggested that it may be too generous. At nearly one-fourth of per capita GDP it probably is, but we should not lose sight of the fact that stipends have been an essential tool to spur the large increase of undergraduate students in higher education. They should continue, even though revised.

Nowadays, many students seek higher education because they aspire to enter more rewarding careers. They know they are capable. They know that graduate positions are higher-paying. It may not be true to state, as the student representatives have claimed with flimsy evidence, that any diminishment of stipends will inevitably result in fewer undergraduate students.

There are many ways with which to support students. First, one should support the families with students in higher education through fiscal measures i.e. deductions or credits on gross taxable income. Secondly, student income could be further supplemented through the availability of micro-jobs that abound in sectors such as tourism for one. There may be others, even within the universities themselves.

The award of a stipend implies "compensation for a service given". I suppose the stipended students could be enrolled as apprentices in the "Intellectual Enterprise of Higher Education". There are many academic activities, not least in research, in which the stipended students could support the work of a university or college under academic supervision of lecturers and professors and thus help to defray the costs of academic work while gaining valuable experience. The apprenticeship, or mentorship, could even be translated into academic credits.

The rest of state support could be given partly in directed funding such as for the procurement of learning materials and the balance in grants and loans in a ratio depending on academic performance. The total state support should be pegged to a reasonable proportion of per capita GDP. My gut feeling tells me to stay away from means testing in Malta!

Actually, now, there is an increasing demand for graduate education leading to master's and doctoral degrees even though stipends have failed to support students at this extremely important level. In fact, the opportunities for graduate study here are not many.

The deficiency is partly due to the lack of consistent funding for research and the very small number of experienced doctoral level research scientists, physicians, and engineers; also far below comparative benchmarks. The number of students in graduate level programmes, both certain professional studies and the research degrees, could be as high as those in the undergraduate ones.

Malta, like the other EU member states, is now bound by the Lisbon Agenda, through which we are committed to invest three per cent of GDP in scientific research. One-third is to come from public funds and two-thirds from private sector investment.

I do not dare calculate that this means that the Malta Government should be investing around Lm10 million a year in scientific research with another Lm20 million being invested by the private sector! In the 2004 budget the government, for the first time ever, took the courageous step of allocating a (meagre) Lm300,000 to invest in a national programme for scientific research, technological development and innovation (RTDI), through the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) that strongly fought for it. Alas, the programme has taken longer to implement than originally planned, but every effort is being made to award a number of "externally peer approved research grants" by the beginning of the new year.

The requirement for private sector investment in scientific research implies an economic sector that is scientifically and intellectually intensive. Still, the structure of the economy is dominated by manufacturing subsidiaries of foreign corporations with little commitment to investing in research here.

One notable exception accounts for over half of our manufacturing exports. It is said that in a modern economy, manufacturing and agriculture should not together exceed much more than one-fourth of GDP. The rest is attributed to advanced activities most of which depend on scientific research, technological development and business innovation, many of which emerge from universities.

Economic restructuring must mean a radical transition from business with hardly any need for intellectual input to emerging companies that depend on scientific research and technological development to increase shareholder value and employee compensation.

This means that the shape of education, the school system, and, in particular, the university system, matches the shape of the economy without becoming strictly utilitarian.

This is the second of three commentaries by Professor Felice on "Restructuring education." The first, published last Sunday, was about "The vital need for higher education" and the third will be on "Progress by structural reform".