University needs radical change to compete globally. Here's how to do it

The University of Malta was founded hundreds of years before those in other small countries like Luxembourg or Cyprus. What would have happened had it not been in existence in one form or another since 1594? Would Malta have been able to develop into what it has become today? To what extent did its university help Malta become one of the earliest British colonies to achieve forms of self-government and to develop a successful economy following independence, eventually negotiating its place as a member of the EU, despite its utter lack of natural resources?

Human resources, geographical location, education, heritage, history and climate are at the core of Malta’s success story. As the government launches a consultation on what our vision of Malta should look like for the period 2025-2050 and beyond, it is time to reflect on the success and especially the mistakes of the past. It is time to be honest about what it takes to be successful in the rapidly changing times of the 21st century.

It is therefore time to make some radical changes to the way that the University of Malta is entrusted to be the crucible of the island’s thinkers and leaders and, together with MCAST, one of the main trainers of its workforce in the Information Age. Before doing so, one also needs to look at the context in which the University of Malta needs to operate.

The University of Malta needs to compete internationally. It needs to compete against other universities to attract students and, much more than ever before, it needs to compete against other universities outside Malta to attract staff. The best students will flock here if we can offer the best teaching and the best research, but, to do so, we need to offer the best staff.

For it to become and/or to retain its place (an arguable point) as a world-class university, it needs to attract and keep the best brains. Malta has proved that it can produce some brilliant people but this is where it also suffers from limitations imposed by the lack of critical mass: in the same way that only a tiny percentage of the population of any country is talented enough to become world-class football or tennis players, in an increasingly specialised academic environment, only a tiny percentage of a population (any population not just Malta’s) have what it takes to become a world-class academic.

This is becoming especially difficult since, who would want to come to work at the University of Malta if it offers some of the lower salaries and, especially, some of the lowest pensions in the EU?

Whatever brilliant brains may be born into Malta today have much greater opportunity to leave Malta and work elsewhere. So what do we need to do to maximise our chances of attracting and retaining the best brains?

1. Work to a 10-year plan

One of the first things to fix is the financial situation of the University of Malta. Every Maltese Government knows that it needs to invest in the University in order to secure Malta’s mid- and long-term future but for far too long it has continued to treat the University in a neo-colonial manner. By this I mean that, instead of following the example in some other EU countries, and agreeing a 10-year plan with the University on the basis of its plans and strategy and then giving it the money agreed in that plan without any further ado, every Rector and every Director of Finance in living memory has to waste significant time and effort every 3-6 months to negotiate the arrival of the next tranche of the University’s budget.

Instead of focusing on how to make the most of the University’s budget to ensure that it delivers world-class teaching and research, the Rector and the Director of Finance are under pressure to micro-manage to ensure that the University survives financially until the next quarter. This has to stop.

There can be no excuse from successive Governments who have found hundreds of millions to squander on doubtful projects and jobs for the boys. Having dealt with some Ministers of Finance or their staff myself in the past, my message would be clear: negotiate with us once every 10 years on the basis of our strategic plans, international trends in the sector, the country’s policy priorities and our past performance and then go away and let us get on with the business of running a university without unnecesary financial worries.

That budget must be set taking into account the remuneration levels, pensions, health care systems and resources of our top competitors across the EU (e.g. the Netherlands, Ireland, Finland, Sweden) as well as our strategic priorities and succession planning. Audit us as much as you please...but cut the public posturing and especially the unnecessary interference. With a proper, carefully thought-out and agreed 10-year contract in place, give us the money, stop whining or imposing unnecessary budget cuts and go away.

2. Competitive salaries

The University of Malta is not free to negotiate salaries to be competitive with universities abroad. This is because the University’s Collective Agreement is ultimately negotiated with the Government’s Collective Bargaining Unit and not with the University’s management. This lack of freedom means that the University suffers because the Government of Malta has dug itself into an untenable position when it comes to employment conditions.

The exercise carried out in the ‘nineties to collapse some 72 previous Government employment grades into 20 has failed abysymally. For the best part of 30 years, various sectors have had to expend considerable time and effort simply in order to devise workarounds for the holy cow that is the Malta Government salary structure. One which completely ignores the laws of supply and demand in an increasingly international environment.

In the job market you need to offer the right conditions to attract and retain scarce resources which are better paid in the private sector or abroad whether these be ICT specialists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers or academics.

Like other Unions, the University’s union UMASA is faced with a Collective Bargaining Unit on the Government’s side which needs to try to square the circle of keeping costs down while adhering to a nonsensical grade structure which, in reality, is utlimately only serving to keep pensions below the original 2/3 scheme by dividing many goverment pay packets into salary and non-pensionable allowances.

That is a wider problem that needs to be fixed but at present it impacts the educational sector too and ignoring it would be part of the problem. So the University needs to be free to peg its salaries with those of its competitors and never mind what the Government has to negotiate with all the other unions representing civil servants and the like inside Malta.

3. Pension incentives

After salary, what is the next question that any prospective employee, Maltese or otherwise, is going to ask? The answer is: pension. What is the pension like? This is where, having learned what the salary is, most prospective employees switch off. And they walk away after having placed first in an interview.

The solution is simple. Give University of Malta employees a real 2/3 pension in the same way as Malta’s Judges, Magistrates and, of course, our thoroughly deserving and truly Honourable Members of Parliament (who discreetly put themselves first when thinking of their pensions). This serious problem can be fixed at the stroke of a pen, by the insertion of less than 30 words into the Pensions Ordinance...and the concomitant increase in the University’s budget.

4. Get its books in order

With financial freedom, comes financial responsibility. For reasons which I shall not go into here, the University of Malta has not been able to produce properly audited annual financial reports for some years. This needs to change if appropriate accountability is to be assured.

A proper CEO is one who can hire and fire in ways which can achieve significant change, and to do so, as with the academic staff, he or she needs to be able to attract and retain the top-calibre staff who can keep the University’s finances running ship-shape.

In order to do so, freedom is required. Freedom to hire and keep the best financial, HR, project management, legal and other administrative staff too. The University has been blessed with some good and dedicated non-academic staff both in the past and present but, in truth, not all cut the mustard. Staff retention is just as important for administrative staff as for academic staff. Make the University an attractive place to work at...and not just a cushy job (for some) for life.

5. Keep politics out

The University must also be set free from political interference. The Government of Malta, any government, must embrace the spirit of independence and grant the University of Malta true autonomy and true self-government. For the best part of 40 years, the University has been governed under the Education Act of 1988 which, while a massive improvement in many respects, brought in self-government in most areas except the most critical one: the Council of the University.

I have seen five Rectors come and go and, whether enlightened geniuses, able administrators, untrustworthy egoists, feeble yes-men (and whatever else their colleagues may have thought of them – I name no names and make no judgement here) they were ultimately all appointed by the Government of the day because the Rector is elected by the Council of the University and Government has a majority of members on council.

So has the University been truly free to choose the best person for the job? Have the University’s staff been able to elect the person whose experience, savoir-faire and vision they could trust most to lead them successfully into and through the 21st century? The answer is a resounding no.

Instead, the Government of the day has pushed forward the person it could trust most, irrespective of his qualifications, experience and abilities. With mixed results. The Government and the Opposition should therefore agree to amend the Education Act (or finally introduce a University of Malta Act which has been in the works since at least 2017, if not longer) such that the University Council, currently bloated with too many members nominated by the Government, instead has two or three members (not more) nominated by the Government, two or three nominated by the Opposition and that’s it insofar as representation of the Executive and the Legislature is concerned.

For accountability to be ensured, if the University’s staff are not content with the way that the Rector is administering the University, then new mechanisms may be brought in for Council’s now modified membership to vote upon his or her removal...or continuation in post. Merit should be the name of the game, not the Rector’s relationship with the Prime Minister or any other politician.

6. Professional management

Not all academics make good rectors, or good deans or good heads of department. But you do need to have direct experience of what it means to be an academic in the EU in the 21st century, to have experience not only of teaching undergraduate classes and supervising graduate students but also of managing other academics (an art form or a science unto itself, take your pick), of designing, submitting and leading collaborative research projects, of implementing hybrid and on-line teaching methods, of working hand in hand as well as competing with dozens of other universities outside Malta. All this as well as a proven social commitment to Malta and a deep understanding of what makes a tiny island nation tick.

This means the ability to deal with successive waves of politicians, civil servants and key members of the educational, industrial and commercial sectors outside the University but whom the University ultimately also serves.

The Rector and the Rectorate (i.e., the five or six Pro-Rectors whom the Rector chooses to assist him or her) cannot look like the executive committee selected by the local PL or PN club, with party political allegiance and a supporting cabinet member being primary factors. Instead they should look like the people whom the University’s staff can trust to lead them with the utmost integrity free from interference from outside the University, whether that interference may be attempted by politicians, industrialists, property moguls, foreign governments or anybody else.

7. Revised promotion mechanisms

The new breed of non-politially appointed University Rector must also be bound by a collective agreement which is both equitable and realistic. UMASA must collaborate in accepting that the line manager of each department must not only assist his or her staff to develop themselves to their full potential but also to play to their strengths. Inevitably, some will be better teachers than they are researchers or managers...and vice-versa. Which means that the University will have to adjust its promotion mechanisms to recognise the differences between staff while remaining as equitable as possible.

A one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily the most equitable or the most efficient way of doing things and may be abused and/or result in frustration and unhappiness. The rectorate must be empowered to negotiate and administer a Collective Agreement which properly accounts for the realities of the qualifications, abilities and potential of University academics.

8. Succession planning

The University’s budget must also include ample allocation for succession planning. What is the use of building a world-class department if one does not have the funding to allow for sufficient overlap between the persons who built up the department over the previous decades and the fresh blood coming in?

9. A bipartisan approach

The Government and the Opposition have the opportunity of agreeing and introducing the University of Malta Act as well as amending the Pensions Ordinance before the term of the current University Rector ends and the vote on his successor are due in rougly a year’s time in March-June 2026. But will the Government and the Opposition forget partisan politics for a few hours and instead take this opportunity as an appropriate moment to introduce the right changes, after duly consulting the academic staff about the ideas sketched out above and others which space constraints have prevented me from mentioning?

Does Malta have a Government and an Opposition enlightened enough to agree to set the University free on the basis of the reasoning outlined above while still maintaining a sufficient level of accountability for spending taxpayers’ money? Only time will tell, but the longer it takes to introduce these key changes, the worse the current situation will become and the sadder our prospects.

If you love something, set it free.

Joe Cannataci has worked at the University of Malta since 1988. He is currently Head of the Department of Information Policy & Governance, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences (MAKS) and is elected by MAKS academic staff to represent them on the University’s Senate.