Call for White Paper on higher education

U.M.A.S.A., the Association of University Academic Staff, has strongly recommended that a White Paper be published by the government before the new Education Act regulating higher education be discussed in Parliament.

The call was made in the feedback to the questions put forward by the National Commission for Higher Education (NCHE). The response to these questions by University Senate or Council have not yet been published.

Nor is the reaction of NCHE yet known. The questions asked by NCHE were:

1. What should the aims and principles of any new structure of the Further and Higher Education Section be?

2. What are the key strengths and weaknesses of the current structure?

3. What dimensions of sectoral structure should reform treat as a priority?

4. What changes in the Education Act could lead to structural improvements of the FDHE sectors?

Reference is made to the Magna Charta Universitatum, ratified in September 1988 by over 400 rectors, including Malta's, on the 900th Anniversary of the Foundation of the University of Bologna.

The Magna Charta refers to fundamental principles in the running of tertiary education, such as the principle of autonomy, that teaching and research must be inseparable, freedom in research and training, and the attainment of universal knowledge.

UMASA stresses the key strengths of the university to be its highly trained and dedicated human resources, and the main weakness the lack of adequate resources mainly caused through the lack of adequate funding and the too rigid centralised and focused on the civil service administrative and organisational structures.

The strongest recommendation is that the University needs to be run by academics and that its structures should be decentralised to ensure greater academic participation in decision-making.

An interesting suggestion coming from the University staff association is that Government should foster an environment in which other private and including foreign higher education and tertiary institutions are set up in Malta with the presumption that all institutions ensure a high quality standard.

This, in brief, is a call for a private university in Malta. UMASA suggests that the new Education Act should allow the setting up of a private higher education and other private tertiary institutions, which could confer degrees.

Some have also suggested that the new institutions should be encouraged to share facilities under predetermined terms and conditions with the University of Malta. In particular, calls are made for a private medical school that is allowed to use the facilities in our major hospitals.

Such a school would certainly provide for a new special industry and a good source of foreign income. Certainly, this will help a number of Maltese medical academics to come back to Malta, and may serve to decrease the brain drain in this area, which is now even worrying the prime minister. A private medical school is thought to help in no small way to stop this haemorrhage.

There are a number of suggestions on the role and position of University officers. This is indeed a sore point. There is no clear agreement on these points as many persons look at it through their own spectacles.

UMASA is pointing for elections and democratic ones up to an extent because at one time it suggests even a required percentage of the female or male gender to form part of the institutional set-up and at others it calls for restrictions in the time that posts should be held, even if this is the democratic wish of the academics concerned.

At others it hints at elimination of all discrimination, except that no mention is made on discrimination that is age-related. It seems that the elders may be well discriminated against with impunity purely based on the fact that they hit the wrong age value.

It is rumoured that the government is pushing more towards having the University officers appointed rather than elected. It is very important that the Education Act does not get involved in the nitty-gritty of details.

These should be left to the "regulation" stage. The Act should concentrate on important aspects, such as the point of whether an alternative university to our only university, the University of Malta should be offered to Maltese and foreign students alike. Some believe that competition in all areas has always more advantages than disadvantages.