Phantoms of the University

Trouble seems to be brewing at the University. For several years you were almost identified by many with the institution. Have you nothing to say about this situation?

Public attention seems to have focused on the academic staff's claims about salaries and the government's consideration of them as exaggerated. I would have thought that before a reasonable solution of this disagreement can be found a more basic and general issue needs to be resolved: what role does the government expect the University to fulfil in the overall development of the country?

An observer of the history of the University over the past 20 years may well be perplexed. When I was appointed rector in 1987, I thought the matter was clear enough. My generation had been brought up on Newman's Idea of a University. I made it quite clear that I agreed with the Cardinal that the prime task of a university was to provide an environment in which all kinds of ideas could be freely discussed.

That was the reason why the post of Precincts Officer was established, with the double duty of ensuring the attractiveness of the physical site and the stimulation of dialogic creative activity involving not only staff and students, but also outsiders. The post was admirably filled by Joe Saliba, who reached the acme of his success at the last election.

However, I disagreed wholeheartedly with Newman's idea that a university should be a teaching institution with research left mainly to others. On the contrary, my idea was that, besides the established faculties, the driving forces of the university would be institutes, the primary aim of which would be research.

The names of the institutes, such as the Institute of Energy Technology, the Mediterranean Institute, the Institute of Gerontology, Institute of Baroque Studies, and so on, indicated the areas in which the University would concentrate; they were mostly interdisciplinary and of particular relevance to our country. The emphasis on research expressed awareness that the knowledge society had arrived and that innovation had now become the key to economic and cultural growth.

This strategy was not consistently pursued. Perhaps it was not even widely understood. Certainly by now it is hardly visible at all. Yet the claims of the academic staff to the salary levels proposed by their unions as also the conditions of work, especially with regard to intellectual property, proposed by the management of the university equally presuppose a university that is not a mere teaching institution. The University is also assumed to be a propulsive force on the road towards the creation of the zones of excellence trumpeted by our political leaders.

Do the budget proposals reveal the government's answer to this basic question?

Conflicting signals are given by the finance minister's speech on one hand, and the financial estimates on the other. The speech says that the budget for the university was being increased by €4.4 million to €36 million, and it adds in the following sentence that €1.5 million is being invested in research and the library.

From this most people (including Ranier Fsadni) concluded that the University was getting an extra €6 million. Fsadni argued that the amount allocated clearly signifies that the government was excluding the option of an innovation- and research-driven institution. But it seems that the situation is actually much worse.

The financial estimates actually assign only €33 million, inclusive of the research and library sum. Moreover, the University had failed to receive from the government moneys that had been promised to cover salary increases granted during the previous year.

Consequently, the real increase in the budgetary vote is so paltry as to signify a downturn rather than a take-off into new spheres. Logically, I can only suppose, in the light of both the Finance Minister's and the Prime Minister's discourse, that somehow some typographical or other error has crept into the estimates.

Do you know of any other more convincing expressions of the government's real intentions with regard to tertiary education?

The context in which the University operates today has become much more complex than when I was in the saddle. Among other changes, there has been the setting up of MCAST. In theory, its function is quite different since it is intended to cater for courses that might lead to a degree but are very practically oriented. However, the fact that most polytechnics in the UK were turned into universities is significant. There is probably still a considerable need for clarification of roles.

Another major change is the greatly increased and still increasing presence of foreign universities competing for clients in Malta. Our EU membership has made the way in which their operation was regulated in relation to the University of Malta, anachronistic. The Commission for Tertiary Education was set up, as then Education Minister Louis Galea fondly hoped, to deal with both these contextual changes.

My impression was that under the chairmanship of Joseph FX Zahra, the commission was giving attention among other things to the vital question of quality assurance.

Without it an innovation-driven university is just as inconceivable as it is without the initial funding that is required to enable the University itself to earn significant income from non-government sources.

Somehow the role of the commission which should have clarified that of every tertiary institution seems to have become itself beclouded.

Education Minister Dolores Cristina cannot certainly complain that her plate is devoid of bones.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Alessandra Fiott.