Prolegomena

Together with Charles Abela and Justyne Caruana, Labour's spokesmen in Parliament on education and youth affairs, I met last week with a "technical" team led by Roderick Chalmers to discuss the financing future of post-secondary education.

He was charged by the education minister to examine the financial sustainability of university and post-secondary education. From the intellectual and "technical" points of view, the minister could hardly have found a more able adviser. The people who accompanied Mr Chalmers during his visit, were equally impressive.

Even so, right through, I remained puzzled as a political decision-maker, about the drift of our conversation. Implicit in the assignment of our interlocutors, there clearly is the feeling on the "official" side that the costs of free education at university and other post-secondary institutions are becoming too heavy for the public budget. The prospects are that such costs will grow at a rapid pace.

University, indeed all post-secondary education, rests on two financial pillars: money to run the relevant institutions, which in the main, do not charge tuition fees for their courses; and funds to provide stipends for students attending these courses.

Budgets at the university and elsewhere are apparently getting strained, to put it mildly. For this year, the university is projecting a deficit of close to Lm1.5 million.

Although over recent years, the number of students attending post-secondary institutions has soared well above the 5,000 to 6,000 mark, the ratio of post-secondary graduates within the population as a whole still lags behind that of many European countries. So, a reasonable policy target would be to continue to expand the student population.

Now it is to be expected and indeed vital, that my colleagues and I regard the matters raised in this context, primarily from a political perspective. Mr Chalmers and his team argued that theirs was a purely technical assignment. Fine, but my puzzlement arose from this observation:

Since the 1990s, I had understood government policy in this area to be that we do need an ongoing expansion in the tertiary sector; also nothing essential must be touched in the provision of tuition free courses and of stipends to students. Rising costs would have to be absorbed (obviously, if need be, at the expense of other areas of public action), because this was a matter to which the government attached top priority.

To be fair, over the years, the government maintained tertiary funding on a growth curve. It had reversed the reforms in the student stipend scheme that the Labour government introduced in 1997, by which part of the stipend took the form of an interest-free loan. And the university had been left to manage its systems with minimal direction from the government.

So the financial strains now building up should not be a problem, from the sectoral perspective of tertiary education. The government would just have to honour its policy commitment, by ensuring that the necessary funds were available, no matter from where or how. Yet the remit of the committee set up by the education minister seems to go way beyond this position. Indeed, it looks like a U-turn is being hatched. If so, it is not just a matter of financial techniques but one of policy: is the government, yes or no, reconsidering its policy of money no problem for tertiary education?

There was another matter about which my colleagues and I felt puzzled. The Chalmers committee set up by the education minister is still preparing its report. But another document, drafted by another government consultant, has been presented to the Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD), discussing issues related to competitiveness. Among other proposals, it suggests a radical redrafting of the stipends system. The MCESD document does so in quite concrete detail, pre-empting proposals which Mr Chalmers and his team were asked to provide. Is this another instance of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing? Or is it indicative of a devious strategy that the government thinks would best allow it to carry out another spectacular U-turn, without provoking the anger of too many people?

For remember the strong, inflexible manner with which the PN greeted the reforms which Labour tried to implement in the stipend scheme six years back. Touching stipends amounted to a dire attack on the rights of young people, we were told then. The electorate accepted that argument.

Recently, Labour launched its commissioned study covering the framework within which a plan for Malta's economic and social regeneration could be drafted. Right from the start, we set out the political agenda to which we would stick in considering such a plan, namely that reforms to make the island regain its competitiveness must remain compatible with the safeguarding of the welfare state. And this is how things should be done. First, clarify the political options.

Surely now, if the government wishes to backtrack on the issue of stipends for tertiary education students, it must do so in an honest manner. It should not hide behind financial and technical analyses (there have always been such studies, in the early to late 1990s as well as now). It should first address the political issues. It should honestly say whether it will still stick no matter what, to the position that any costs within the tertiary sector must be borne, period.

Using technical and financial consultancies, in synch with each other or in disjointed juxtaposition, as prolegomena for honest political discussion will create even more dissension than there is now in the country, especially among the government's own supporters. They have been fed with half-truths and untruths for too long. The PN still needs to learn how to tell people the truth.