Normal human beings who open a tuition centre to hold classes for their students need a Malta Environment Planning Authority (MEPA) permit. When submitting an application to the Ministry of Education to operate a tuition centre, they must provide detailed plans and compliance certificates approved by MEPA, for premises designed for education and training purposes. If they do not have this MEPA permit, they cannot be granted a license by the Ministry of Education. But our country is a farm where, as George Orwell says,“all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” And people like Antonello Cappitta, who runs the European Institute of Education (EIE), still enjoys legal immunity.
On 6 March 2006, Cappitta applied for a partial change-of-use from offices at ‘The Doliphs’, Triq Sir Ugo Mifsud, Ta’ Xbiex, to classrooms for educational purposes. On 9 October 2006, the MEPA case officer recommended the refusal of the application: according to the local plan, the zone was a residential priority area, where only residences and embassies are allowed and where buildings for educational purposes are ruled out. MEPA dismissed a subsequent appeal, on the grounds that the change of use would go against its policies for the area. The National Commission for Persons with Disability (NCPD) assessed the buildings. It recommended refusal: the main door was inaccessible; no lift and sanitary facilities were available for disabled persons.
Cappitta withdrew his application. But since then EIE has moved to ‘The Doliphs’, and he has been using the buildings as classrooms where lectures are held regularly even though the necessary MEPA and NCPD permits are lacking. Why is he allowed to break the law with impunity? How did the Ministry of Education grant him a license to run a tuition centre in these buildings when the necessary permits have not been issued?
I have spoken to lecturers and students who use these buildings and they have shown me timetables with specific details of when classes are held at these buildings. It’s not true that students go there only to pick educational material for the distance learning courses they follow at home. Lecturers and students go regularly to the EIE buildings at Ta’ Xbiex for lectures.
Is Cappitta allowed to break the law because he is a PN activist (in 2005 he contested the Iklin local council elections for the PN at Iklin, where he obtained only 25 votes? Is he above the law because the PN appointed him in their higher education issue group?
Undoubtedly Cappitta is very well connected, and this has made it easier for him to create the impression that he provides top quality educational opportunities. He managed to dupe over 40 students by enrolling them in diploma, first and second degree courses run by the Malta Centre of the European University (EU) based in Switzerland – a bogus institution which serious educational authorities abroad (but not in Malta) list in their websites to warn their citizens of fake universities before registering for their expensive courses.
EIE projected this fake university as a prestigious educational institution that would enhance Malta’s higher education system. Over 40 people were taken in by an ad in the The Times saying that EIE was “recognised by the Government of Malta, by the Ministry of Education, Malta.” The glossy EIE/EU brochure also said that all the work in the curriculum has been organised in Malta and corrected in Malta under the auspices of the education ministry. The Minister launched the Malta Centre of the European University. When its president Dr Dirk Craen visited Malta, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi welcomed him with open arms in April 2006. The PN government did all it can to give the European University credibility.
Now, the students who paid so much money to follow their courses through EIE have been told (too late) by the Malta Qualification Recognition Information Centre (MQRIC) that their degree cannot be recognised as a degree, and that the European University is not accredited as a university after all. The EIE is trying to create the impression that it’s not responsible for the Malta Centre of the European University any longer. But next month over 20 students are going to ‘graduate’ after following a first degree course in Business Administration and these degrees are to be awarded by the European ‘university’. I have seen circulars written this year by EIE to their students which are stamped with the European University logo.
The Minister of Education has failed to deliver on her promise to bring a higher education bill to parliament before June 2009. She is taking too long to act to regulate the higher education sector in Malta, to set high standards and to stop unscrupulous operators from cheating students by selling them fake degrees. It is shameful that the PN government and the educational authorities continue to protect those who are exploiting the aspirations of those who want to further their education and snatch their hard earned money and shatter their dreams.
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But our country is a farm where, as George Orwell says,“all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” And people like Antonello Cappitta, who runs the European Institute of Education (EIE), still enjoys legal immunity.
