On Monday, November 28, 1977, prime minister Dom Mintoff addressed students at the Polytechnic. He announced his plans for tertiary education – to destroy the “old” university (the University of Malta) and create a “new” one (the former MCAST).
Tertiary education would become strictly utilitarian, serving only the economy. Students would work for six months and study for six months. GWU officials would choose who could join Mintoff’s student-worker scheme. The faculties of arts, science and theology would be abolished. Research or higher degrees would stop.
Mintoff’s plan almost worked. In 1981, the year of a disputed election in which Labour lost its majority but retained power, no students graduated. In 1983, only 83 students did. A decade earlier, when the PN was defeated after a decade in power, 205 students graduated.
In his letter of May 1978 to distinguished sociologist Ralph Dahrendorf, Mintoff denounced the university’s faculties as “bastions of conservatism”. Mintoff viewed the university as a hotbed for anti-Labour sentiment and opposition – and he was determined to crush it.
Labour hasn’t changed. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana is on the attack again. His open hostility and public humiliation of the university were ominously reminiscent of Mintoff’s. “They should pull their socks up and roll up their sleeves and generate income,” Caruana barked, “I’ve had enough of this.”
Caruana thinks the only purpose of our university is to operate like a business and generate income. He judges the university solely on how much cash it rakes in.
The university does generate money but that’s not its main function. Twenty per cent of its annual budget, amounting to some €24 million, comes from student fees and consultancies. The rest, €91 million, comes from the state. That’s a mere pittance compared to the €142 million government spent in film cash rebates. A total of €47 million went on one single film – the Gladiator sequel.
Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo commissioned a study that “factually confirms” that our economy gained €3 for every €1 spent in cash rebates. Can you imagine how much Malta gains for every euro spent on university education?
Those €90 million on university yield massive returns. The health service alone is run by university graduates – nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, radiographers, laboratory scientists, speech therapists and doctors – most of whom spend a lifetime of service in the public sector. Teachers, social workers, psychologists, engineers, architects and even most accountants and lawyers give back to the country far more than what the state invests in them.
Labour gave Barts Medical school €36 million of taxpayers’ money. In 2023, just 22 doctors graduated from Barts. In November 2023, 2,013 students graduated from the University of Malta.
On a pro-rata basis, Caruana should give the University of Malta €3,294 million. Caruana should remember that not a single one of those 22 Barts graduates contributed a single minute to Malta’s health service. Worse still, those Barts students stole educational opportunities from University of Malta medical students training at Mater Dei Hospital.
When Vitals failed to complete the Barts medical school premises, the government took over Gozo’s sixth form, kicked out Gozitan students and spent over €1 million refurbishing Gozo’s sixth form for use by Barts.
Labour gave the American University of Malta a prime site in Cospicua and planned to hand it a huge tract of priceless ODZ land at Żonqor. In return, AUM was meant to bring 4,000 students and revamp the economy of the south. AUM students are as rare as snow leopards. Yet, Robert Abela still gave AUM 31,500 square metres of SmartCity land for the ridiculous price of 47c per square metre.
Labour doesn’t want people who challenge its contempt for merit, its brazen abuse of power or its efforts to stifle basic freedoms- Kevin Cassar
Caruana is happy to hand over precious land and millions of euros to profit-making institutions that contribute almost nothing to the country. But he begrudges the University of Malta, which produces thousands of graduates per year, a mere €90 million. In language Caruana understands – those thousands of graduates also generate billions of euros to his economy.
There’s something fundamental about university education Labour never grasped. The university isn’t a factory of trained workers. It’s an institution of learning whose value far exceeds Labour’s communist utilitarian ideas. That’s difficult to comprehend for a party whose leader mocks authors who dedicate their time writing books.
The university is not a business. When universities are run like businesses you get the AUM, a bankrupt enterprise. Or Trump University, an American company which defrauded students of their money without conferring a degree.
Labour’s hostility towards the university isn’t based on a lamentable misunderstanding of its noble role.
Labour’s recent frontal attack on the university was triggered by recent polls showing that only 18.6 per cent of graduates would vote Labour. That’s in contrast to a staggering 61.3 per cent among the primary educated.
The gap in support for Abela between primary and tertiary educated is even wider – 70.3 per cent vs 20.9 per cent.
Labour thinks the university produces PN voters. It doesn’t. It produces, mostly, people who can think for themselves, people trained to distinguish fact from fiction, who can tell which sources are reliable. They’re more likely to recognise misinformation and disinformation. University graduates aren’t easily duped.
Those graduates would vote for any party, even Labour, if it would benefit the country. But Labour doesn’t want people trained to think critically. They want blind loyalty, voters whose opinion can be moulded by the twisted propaganda of its media machine. Labour doesn’t want people who challenge its contempt for merit, its brazen abuse of power or its efforts to stifle basic freedoms.
If Caruana had concerns about management of the university’s finances, he should have discussed those at the right fora. Instead, he chose to humiliate the university and its leadership publicly. “Pull your socks up,” he demanded.
The ones who should pull their socks up are Caruana and his government. They’re responsible for the shocking abuse of public funds – the Vitals/Steward scandal, the Mozura windfarm, the useless ‘consultants’ like Joseph Cuschieri and Carmen Ciantar.
The endless direct orders, the plundering of public land to hand over to developers, the abusive sanctioning of illegal developments, the rackets at Identità and Transport Malta, the disability benefits scam and PBS’s millions in state funding. The millions spent on lavish dinners and hospitality at Johann Grech’s film festivals and the €500,000 on an embarrassing film featuring Grech are what Caruana should be chasing.
Sadly, Caruana knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.