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Opinion | Sunday, 04 April 2010

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Another university… are you crazy?

Do we need another university in Malta? No, if it means having another University of Malta. Yes, if it means identifying the unsatisfied demands we have for more university education in our islands. Those who are treating Joseph Muscat’s call to think about setting up another university in Malta with derision are stuck in the past. They have not realised that Malta is well on the way of having two public universities already: the University of Malta and the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology (MCAST) as in collaboration with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft MCAST has started offering first degree courses in four areas and the first students will be graduating in the coming months.
The higher education sector is already liberalised in Malta. A number of local private education centres offer degree courses provided by a number of overseas universities. Government has also directed Malta Enterprise to recommend measures to attract foreign direct investment in tertiary and industrial technical education in Malta. So the monopoly of the University of Malta is dead and buried. Setting a new trend, in the last few years hundreds of our young people have started going to mostly British universities to obtain their first degree.
Muscat is right to call for a non-partisan debate on higher education as our institutions and policies on higher education need to catch up with the present day reality and then move forward to chart the future. There is a lot of hot air about the government’s 2015 vision and how we are going to become a world centre of excellence in education in five years’ time. Yet 40% of our 16 year olds still drop out of school after they finish their secondary education.
How can we build a dynamic and viable knowledge society and economy when we still have an education system that lets 40% of our young people down, while most of our people in employment have either low skills or skills that do not match what we need in the 21st century? Lifelong education opportunities and continuous professional development, so necessary to keep up with the constant changes in today’s world, still reach a relatively small part of our workforce.
Government has set a very ambitious target for 2015: a dramatic jump of 25% (from 60 to 85%) for those who will take up post-secondary education and a 10% increase (from 25 to 35%) for those who will undertake a university course. How can this ambitious target be reached when Education Minister Dolores Cristina moves at such a snail pace in higher education?
The Education Minister had committed herself to bring to Parliament the Higher Education bill by June 2009. She failed to do so. Recently I asked her when she will be presenting this bill… her only answer was that the bill is still being drafted and she will come to Parliament with it “as early as possible”. Two years have passed since she was appointed Education Minister, and she has failed to maintain the momentum for change in higher education started by the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE).
Since Minister Cristina was given the education portfolio in 2008 the only sign of new life shown by the NCHE, the University of Malta, MCAST, the Institute of Tourism Studies (ITS) and the Malta Qualifications Council (MQC) has been the result of initiatives started by her predecessor, Dr Louis Galea or new steps taken by the institutions themselves despite the minister’s poor and uninspiring leadership.
I hope that in the coming months she will finish the work on the new Higher Education Bill as we are already lagging dangerously behind in this area. Other countries have caught up with us in the Bologna process and the European Higher Education Area. There is still a lot to do to set up the necessary structures to carry out quality assurance in our public and private higher education institutions and ensure that all the courses offered are of international high standards. We also need to weed out those who give Malta and local serious private education centres a bad name by offering (even to people from overseas) fake university and college courses that are expensive yet worth very little when it comes to applying for jobs and promotions.
So do we need another public institution in Malta that can offer courses at university level? Serious policy-making should be evidence-based. We are lucky that in this area a lot of excellent preparatory work has been done by the NHCE to allow us to take informed decisions, and not simply base ourselves on wishful thinking. NHCE research shows that because of a lower birthrate even if more of our young people go to the University of Malta in the coming decade, from 4.973 (23% in 2008) to 5,800 (35% by 2020), the impact will not be substantial. The University of Malta will probably cope with these increased numbers. NHCE also says that the University should aim to attract 500 fee-paying students every year from overseas for the coming 10 years.
Even if the University manages to reach this very ambitious target and absorbs these incoming students, we should still consider seriously setting up another university. Can we afford to? Do we have enough human resources to make sure that the necessary standards are reached and kept? We already have to fund the University of Malta, MCAST, ITS and other essential institutions like NHCE, MQC and other structures if we are to have top quality higher education in Malta. So we cannot afford any duplication and fragmentation.
But I believe we should explore – realistically and with an open mind – the viability of setting up a new university in Malta that will be very different from the University of Malta and MCAST in the courses that it offers and the way it offers them. We can learn from the new virtual universities, which are being considered the universities of the future. We should also learn from the experience of the UK Open University to offer top quality courses to adults. This new university will open new opportunities for many people who, for some reason or other, are now being denied entry to the University of Malta. The new university can offer courses in new areas of study that are not being offered by the University of Malta.
We cannot realistically expect the University of Malta and MCAST to satisfy all the new demands for a university education in our country. One of the recommendations of the NHCE in its Further and Higher Education Strategy 2020 is to “attract 30,000 more students and adults in areas identified as a national priority for Malta’s economic, cultural and social development.” The University of Malta is not in a position to cater for this higher demand and we should consider setting up a new university to do so.
E-learning in tertiary education makes it possible to set up a new local university to enable more of our people to acquire the skills, knowledge and mindset needed to succeed in the high-technology world of the 21st century. Much of the change that higher-education institutions are now facing is due to rapidly changing learning methods in cyberspace. Virtual universities are being considered the educational environment of tomorrow and will be the most significant learning industry in the future. The sooner we wake up to this reality the better.


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