Strategic development plan

At this stage when the university is facing severe financial problems, it is worth bringing to public attention where the money is going. It will be disastrous if the strategic plan had to be shelved. Our young people will still develop, or rather not develop, if the plan is shelved.

Age waits for no one. This is not the building of an opera house which perhaps can wait for better financial times. For this reason, we are producing the preamble to the published strategic plan as written by Professor Charles Farrugia, Pro Rector and Strategic Development Plan co-ordinator.

This Strategic Development Plan is designed on the awareness that tertiary education in Malta has entered an era of great change. In the next five years, the university will face challenges posed by growing requests for students' entry, the technological revolution, limited finances, increased competition for state resources, and demands for greater accountability. At the same time, the university has to ensure that its aims are achieved through a policy of equal opportunities among men and women, as well as for persons with special needs.

Increasingly, it has to operate within a multi-cultural environment. Inevitably, the university is not only caught up in, but has to contribute to what Bertrand Giles had termed "the historic transformation" that is changing our technological system as we move from an industrial to a cognitive society.

Do strategic development plans have any value in age where bifurcation and non-linear developments become more pronounced? The university cannot predict its future, but its community of scholars, students and support staff can shape its development by seeking answers to two future-oriented questions: what needs to be done and how can we do it?

The following nine goals provide answers to these two questions:

1. Quality education: the university will continue to offer quality education to enhance its role as Malta's leading institution of higher learning and to strengthen its academic reputation among international peers.

2. Excellence in research: the university will continue to pursue investigative and applied research that is recognised internationally for its quality and impact on the academic community, as well as the local population at large.

3. Quality of life: the university will re-inforce its commitment to improve people's quality of life by means of professional and liberal education courses, together with an ongoing programme of educational and cultural functions.

4. The world of work: the university will strengthen its links with the world of work to undertake joing projects that are mutually beneficial.

5. Increase in student numbers: the university will intensify its drive to increase the number of students coming from all sectors and age groups of Maltese society and from overseas.

6. Streamlined administration: the university will streamline its administrative structures to provide the appropriate back-up to its expanding academic committments.

7. Improve the physical environment: the university will improve and sustain the working and aesthetic physical environment of its campus sites.

8. Fund generating: the university will seek a higher allocation of state funds, and in a proactive manner, will endeavour to generate additional funds in order to continue providing quality education to an ever increasing number of students.

9. Enhanced quality assurance: the university will expand its Quality Assurance Programme to ensure excellence and accountability in teaching, research and administration.

These goals have evolved following widespread discourse and debate in all the university's sector. In 1999, all faculties and institutes were asked to carry an academic and administrative exercise to establish their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

On the basis of this analysis, the various university entities were asked to identify the areas of activity they sought to expand, and to suggest how they saw the university's future in the light of their plans.

These were formulated into a 'draft' 2002-2006 Strategic Development Plan document, copies of which were given to all academic members of staff and to all senior support staff. The 'draft' was vigorously discussed at departmental and division, faculty and institute and support section meetings throughout the university. The present document is the result of the ideas, suggestions, feedback and amendments that have emerged from the grassroots at these and previous meetings.

Some have argued that the Strategic Development Plan is incomplete since, while it identifies goals and objectives, it lacks the specific actions expected of faculties, institutes and support sections. This approach is intentional, for it would be impractical and presumptuous to specify the many initiatives that different university entities can take to implement the plan's goals and objectives.

As the Strategic Development Plan emerged from grassroots, its implementation will be best achieved through specific actions identified and executed at departmental and division, faculty and institute and support section level. Once Senate and Council have approved the plan, members of staff individually and collectively will complete the circle by bringing to fruition the university's goals and objectives through their initiatives and actions.

The university is determined to meet its goals under the leadership of the Rector, along with guidance from Council and Senate members. It intends to enhance an environment that is intellectually stimulating, to reinforce a culture that is sensitive to national needs, and to build an academic and management structure that makes the most effective use of its human and material resources. Wider and stronger quality assurance measures will guarantee that academic and support services are of the highest standards.

This is an ambitious but realistic Strategic Development Plan. It charts where the university wishes to be in 2006 by overcoming the challenges and realising the opportunities it is likely to face over this period. The commitment of university personnel will ensure that all its goals and objectives are achieved. As Seneca said: "there is no such a thing as a favourable wind for the person who does not know where he is going."