It is unusual that academics agree to an early-morning interview. But Juanito Camilleri is, after all, not the usual academic. When we first agreed to the meeting, the University of Malta's communications officer said the best time to see the rector was "at 8.30 a.m. or even earlier".
The following Tuesday, as the first students and lecturers carried themselves to their 8 a.m. class, Prof. Camilleri sat upright and composed at the head of the long mahogany table in the rector's office, handling an hour of questioning before moving on to his one-thousand-and-one things to fit into his day.
He had imagined, before accepting his nomination earlier this year, that the post would bite into the treasured free time he used to spend, away from the social activities he is now in duty bound to attend.
"It wasn't an easy decision for my wife and I as we both work long hours. I have been at the university before, although the post I had then was quite different from this one," he says.
Different indeed; because being an information technology lecturer and being the rector is like chalk and cheese. As it turned out during the election that followed the end of Roger Ellul Micallef's second term as rector, most academics deemed Prof. Camilleri to be a relative outsider to the University of Malta, thinking of him as an unlikely candidate to helm the institution. Despite making remarkable academic achievement at a very young age (Prof. Camilleri obtained a Ph.D in theoretical computer science from Cambridge University at 23), in fact, the new rector was to many people the highly-respected executive who built Go Mobile and not an academic.
Accustomed to the private sector, where "an idea crosses your mind one day and is put in place the next", Prof. Camilleri says he had been wary of accepting a public post where it would be more difficult to implement decisions, where "it is harder to think and achieve quickly".
"The pressure I felt when I was approached was huge. Initially I refused, but I was convinced that I could really make a contribution. An element of change was needed within the university, particularly from the point of view of its management infrastructure, and I thought I could help in that regard."
At the beginning of his term, he highlighted two qualities on which the University of Malta should rest: decisiveness and leadership. Nothing less is expected of him, and he is fully aware of that. Perhaps, the attention that is drawn to these virtues from time to time, not just within the university context but in the country as a whole, implies that people who are decisive in their action and can lead others are hardly anywhere to be seen.
"Leadership," Prof. Camilleri explains, "is really measured by the ability to inspire people to work with you, especially in a complex reality like this. It is the ability to get your enemies to respect you. And I demand a lot of respect. I have no shortfall of enemies either, because in a position like this you inherit friends and you inherit enemies also".
Decisiveness, on the other hand, does not mean taking decisions in a draconian manner: "It does not mean being a bulldozer, and I am definitely not like that. It is very easy to lead decisively a university like this into the ground".
Prof. Camilleri is aware that any decision may be an inspiration to some but turns out to be unpopular with others.
"I'm not here to create a fan club. I'm here to do what I deem is right according to my conscience. Obviously, I need to have an informed opinion on most things and I work hard at that. There will be times when I'm terribly wrong in a decision I've taken, which means that I will have to acknowledge it and take corrective action."
As a football manager who takes the lead of a team that is struggling to avoid relegation, Prof. Camilleri has to take stock of why some players are unhappy, why the team has been getting too many goals and scoring too little, and even that the fans are losing patience. He cannot escape stark realities like overpopulated courses, lack of space and research equipment, an under-resourced library, an unsustainable stipend system and other problems which, for years, have weighed down the university and hampered academic quality.
"Having been here for just more than three months, I do realise that the university is in dire need of restructuring from the administrative point of view, and that is the result of its own success," Prof. Camilleri says.
Of course, it is no surprise that with the student population going up from 700 to more than 10,000 following 115 undergraduate courses and 85 postgraduate programmes in a few years, space soon became an issue.
"The problem is that while the university has expanded in its scope to meet the needs of the country, the administrative infrastructure has not evolved. We still have a traditional, paper-based system of doing human resources. In finance, we have a number of disparate packages that are not integrated. Various areas of administration need re-engineering through, for example, new IT tools. But it's not just about technology. We need new systems so that the university can work more efficiently than it is at present."
Yet, besides overhauling the administrative mechanism, Prof. Camilleri has pledged to put the university's money where the country's mouth is. "If we truly want 15,000 to 20,000 students going to university, consolidating present degree programmes and expanding into other areas that are important to the country, much more investment and space is required. With its acute problem of space, for example, the university needs to question seriously whether the Msida campus is large enough to cater for so many students," he says.
"One could see certain disciplines moving out of Tal-Qroqq as more building here would be very difficult. You have the Mater Dei Hospital on one side, an ecologically-important valley on another, a main road in another direction and the planned residential complex on the Birkirkara side."
The new rector has also undertaken to hold a mammoth task to analyse what resources, financial or otherwise, are absorbed by every single degree programme. He says the task may take years to complete and is still just "a twinkle in our eyes". What is sure is that where and how resources are directed in the future needs to be determined before the institution can grow further.
"Through activity-based costing, we should ask how our activities can be rationalised, whether different pedagogical methods can be used to achieve better aims, how the university can be more cost-effective. Once we decide where we have to go, we have to analyse exactly what the resources required are, starting from space and lecturing staff, to our library and support staff.
"The stark reality is that if we try to do more with the same resources, each of the parts will have less. Stretching them too far would be the key to achieving mediocrity. It's easy for us to say we don't have enough money, because in an environment like the university you can never have enough. You always need more as there's always much more you could do. Before you can argue that way you have to create the basis on which to say how much is needed for the components."
So the idea of activity-based costing is not to axe those courses that are not economically viable but to show clearly what resources are needed for each programme. Then follows the choice of which programmes to retain, restructure, remove, expand or build afresh.
"This is not a question of the big hatchet man coming in but a cycle which every institution, particularly a university, should go through from time to time. And this is a good moment in time to do so. There might be areas where there is an overlap and work is being duplicated.
We may be just using the barriers of faculties or of personalities simply to create the type of redundancy that isn't cost effective. Could certain courses be joined together perhaps? How can we streamline what we do? If we truly need more resources then we can argue that position. The nation will be put on the spot and if we really want a first-class university then it would make sense to invest more."
Still, it is argued, if the cash that is handed down to students in the form of stipends were to be added to the university's yearly budget, there would be more room for manoeuvring. Introduced to encourage entry into tertiary education at a time when the number of graduates was low, stipends have become an added burden as numbers increased. As student bodies along the years were dead set against any reform to the system, successive governments have either cut down stipends first and later reversed their decision or else carried out velvet-glove reforms. Yet, many still argue that stipends should stop, especially since Maltese students do not even pay for tuition.
Prof. Camilleri says stipends are social benefits and they should support students who do not have the means to support themselves. "Anyone who is willing and who deserves to go through tertiary education should be helped. But besides the incentive pushing students into university, there should be a pull factor I call a scholarship which promotes excellence."
Malta does run the risk, though, of having more students going into a system that is intrinsically mediocre because it is under resourced once that cash could be invested in education itself, the rector acknowledged.
"However, what needs to be taken into consideration is that professionals in Malta earn less than their European counterparts if you were to factor wages per capita of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our situation is such that if you study, you will not be recognised financially as you would in other countries, particularly in some professions, and this jeopardises the entire incentive structure. One might argue that many people would not go into tertiary education if there weren't a stipend, because it's not worth the sacrifice. Another aspect is that in countries where stipends don't exist, a fresh graduate usually masters a much better pay and will likely get the 'collateral' against which to get a loan for his studies. In Malta, the spread of pays isn't such that allows such a model to happen."
Prof. Camilleri says his biggest wish is to instil in the entire system the pursuit of excellence, which he defines as "a first-class attitude with which you approach life, which is very much akin to an entrepreneurial spirit".
"First you set your goals high, and try your very best to achieve them. If you don't, and not for want of trying, then that's not your fault and it's acceptable. However, if you can achieve higher goals and you don't because you are complacent you would be doing yourself and society a disservice. There is nothing wrong in people maximising their talents for their own benefit and that of their families.
"A degree is meant to show you how little you know. Once you appreciate what a lot there is to learn, and that the most important things in life can be learnt from anyone, and from any circumstance, you graduate towards the first-class attitude. When you realise that there's so much you can do and strive to do your best in your specific sphere, you are working towards excellence."
He says excellence, or the lack of it, is linked to what industrialists really mean when they say that the university is not producing the right skills for industry. "That sounds strange, because most industries in Malta, be they electronics, telephony or pharmaceutical companies, are built on the graduates of this university. The truth behind that comment, however - and this is what people from industry really mean - is that our graduates are geared towards certification. People study to pass their exams instead of reading to enhance knowledge or know-how. This is a result of our education system as a whole. We need to help our students translate and apply what they are learning in the real world."
The value of knowledge, Prof. Camilleri believes, lies in its application. "They call me utilitarian and they are right. I think there is utility in everything. Is there a utility in culture, the arts and philosophy for example? Of course there is. It makes our life richer and more accomplished. One of the most esoteric areas of mathematics, considered the purest of math theory till a few decades ago, was number theory. Many said these researchers were simply playing with theories that got them nowhere. Today, there is a very applied aspect of number theory, which is cryptography, on which modern computer systems are based. Even the purest of research today will become the applied research of tomorrow."