University's contribution to employment

In the past 16 years the number of University students rose from just under 1,000 to close to 10,000, meaning that just about the same number of people registering for work at this time were transformed from active job-seekers into students.

This same process is now being applied at MCAST and in a few years an equivalent number of those unemployed today may be turned into tertiary education students.

This is certainly much better than creating work corps under whatever name. The increase in tertiary education students certainly leads to provide persons properly trained for more and better jobs.

Yet, however excellent and praiseworthy the successful increase in the number of students, one has to be careful not to provide too many frustrated graduates. Unemployment is high in the case of teachers and some guidance is essential in this area to ensure that the number of teachers produced by the University is not exceeding the country's needs, although one should prefer having a few extra than a shortage. One would prefer a teacher as his taxi driver than a taxi driver as the teacher for his children.

What forms of guidelines and publicity are given to our youths wishing to join the teaching profession as to which areas are more likely to have vacancies in future? Could the Education Division start publishing the fields where we have an excess of teachers and those where we need more teachers?

The spectre of unemployment looms large over other areas where we are witnessing overproduction. One is that of pharmacists. It is enough to state that for a single vacancy of a junior pharmacist, no fewer than 35 applied. It has become habitual for the government, as in the case of dentistry and medicine, to offer employment to all the new graduates in pharmacy. Now it appears that the government has decided not to employ any. Hence the new trend in unemployment.

This year we had 44 new pharmacy graduates. Some were absorbed by the developing pharmaceutical industry. Some found a job as medical representatives and a few went into community pharmacy. Next year 55 are expected to graduate. Unless the government employs quite a number of these new graduates there will probably be unprecedented pharmacist unemployment.

One has to note that on a per capita basis the number of pharmacists graduating in Malta every year is double that of many other countries. So one should not wonder that we have a surplus of pharmacists. One should also note that our University accepts students to join the pharmacy course with lower grades compared to other EU countries.

Other health professions such as medical doctors in the same faculty require much higher grades for entry while other areas of study such as dentistry and physiotherapy limit the possibility of having excess graduates over the country's needs through a very rigid numerus clausus.

It is of limited use to devise action plans for employment unless we estimate how many professionals and workers are needed in the different areas. Then all efforts should be made to train persons in the required areas. The Malta target is to increase the number of 22-year-olds with a tertiary qualification. This should be done in the areas where these qualifications are really needed.

Minister Louis Galea points out that the effort to ensure a forced and coherent approach to employment policy across and beyond the government and the translation of such policy into tangible measures, has meant that the plan has moved beyond rhetoric into actions that are highly visible.

The University too must take visible action to ensure that students are prepared for more and better jobs. The government must plan and decide in which areas and how many are the jobs requiring graduates from our University in the coming years. This information needs to be communicated to the University and published. Private enterprise must do likewise.

The government must then provide the necessary support to the University to make the necessary changes including those needed to develop new areas for which there is a great demand, such as a degree in veterinary surgery.

One last point in meeting the action plan targets early as regards University is the increase in older workers' employment rate. University professors spend a significant part of their lives preparing for their work period. This reaches an average age of 28 to 30 when they obtain a Ph.D. However they are still expected to retire at 60. Why not increase the retirement age of University professors to 65 or 70, starting on a voluntary basis without requiring them to apply for an extension year after year when they reach 60 and this extension is sometimes given only until the age of 65 when academics are forced to retire?

Another feature found in most European universities is late retirement for academics. But alas nothing is so simple in our island. It has to take ages to take simple, logical decisions. One hopes that these would be early actions to be taken as part of the Employment Action Plan.