Moment of truth

The government will this year face the moment of truth as far as its commitment to tertiary education is concerned. The University requires an immediate increase of about €15 million in its recurrent expenditure. Failure to meet the expense may delay developments in both the teaching programmes and more importantly in its research committments.

Young scientists obtaining a first class honours degree need to be employed as research assistants or fellows at salaries commensurate with what they would have earned if they had to be employed in the industry. This promise of employment must be fulfilled now before they are induced to follow other career paths.

The University on its part should ensure that academics with substantial teaching commitments are also properly promoted so they do not feel that those committed to teaching are discriminated against in favour of those committed solely to research. In this way the young researchers would not be loaded with an exhaustive lopsided teaching load that disturbs their enthusiasm for research.

However, if the University persists in its insistence of not rewarding teaching commitments by appropriate promotion to the grade of professor senior lecturers will shift teaching duties to the newcomers and start building their research portfolio to make up for what they have lost in the recent past. A balance in the reward for both research and teaching must be put in place.

Joseph Azzopardi and Nathaniel Massa made a very clear statement in their article 'Equipping the University for a knowledge-based Malta' that appeared in last week's edition of The Sunday Times. We underline some salient points made in the article:

1. The academic staff's collective agreement expired way back in 2003. It requires immediate revision.

2. Unless salaries are brought in line with market realities our alma mater will experience a brain drain of its best staff and potential lecturers including a drain to local industry.

3. Government's negative attitude to the University academic staff will certainly risk that Malta will continue to be under-perform in competitiveness, research and development and innovation EU league tables.

4. The three functions of the University's role to provide teaching, undertake research and offer a service to government and industry is a key issue that needs to be addressed immediately in a financial, sustainable way.

5. The view that the government will solve the problem in three years' time, and not now, because of the drastic increase in food and oil prices, does not make sense since the building of a knowledge-based Malta is already running behind schedule. It needs to be accelerated not derailed.

6. By ordering the quasi-symbolic industrial action, the University of Malta Academic Staff Association (UMASA) and Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) are simply pointing out that the University is a critical area for Malta's successful development and that government's delaying attitude in giving academic staff a decent salary is putting the University at risk.