University phantoms

In his column on The Sunday Times, Prof. Fr Peter Serracino Inglott wrote that in the currently stalled salary level negotiations, the University management's proposals with regard to intellectual property presupposed a University that was 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" (November 30).

A glance at the University's own website today, let alone published lists of publications in the past, would show that research has been a life-blood, not only in the Humanities. Academic rights and freedoms we fought for in the 1970s and 1980s when they were threatened. However, what do the new proposals stipulate?

Without distinguishing between copyright and patent, the presumption was (is) that henceforth the management (to use Fr Peter's word) may "allow" scholars to pursue and to publish their thoughts and findings and, furthermore, it may "allow" them to divulgate these, provided, however, that it first permit them to do so, that it subsequently own them when ready, and that they be obliged to thank it for that. The terminology used repeatedly is "commercial exploitation".

"The intellectual property arising from academic research shall vest with the University", stated the document put before us by one of the unions, on whose committee nobody from the Humanities sits. The originator/s would be entitled to a percentage of all net profits gained by the University (sic). Academics "will collaborate with the University to facilitate such commercial exploitation..." Moreover: "Members of academic staff shall notify the director of legal services of the University with all intellectual property which is potentially commercialisable and with any associated materials, including research results, both prior to commencement and once the research has reached a stage wherein it is commercially exploitable. In case of doubt as to whether research is commercially exploitable or otherwise, academic members of staff undertake to seek the advice of the director of legal services."

The University would be entitled commercially to exploit any result obtained under its aegis and if it did not deem itself to have a commercial interest in pursuing the proposal it still would retain the right to use the author's intellectual property "in whichever manifestation for strictly non-commercial purposes".

Any University justly prides itself on the scholarly achievements of professors and lecturers among it academic corps. Without them, it would not exist. The greatest compliment these could pay it is by designating themselves as identified or associated with it when delivering keynote speeches to world congresses or having their books published by leading University presses, their chapters and articles carried in internationally recognised books and journals. "Ir-raġuni ma tridx forza".

A wide, varied and delicate spectrum is involved here - full-timers, part-timers; scientists, litterateurs; seniors, juniors; researchers, teachers, administrators, practitioners. What part-timers in the traditional professions or in technical/technological services, highly in demand commercially, may be expected to produce differs when compared to committed full-time researchers and writers, who have never ticked away the hours whether toiling away from an office or a study, a library or an archive (or, indeed, a laboratory). Shirkers deserve no mercy.

"Academics will not enter into any sponsorships or commercial agreements with third parties related to their research at University without the explicit consent of the Rectorate... Ownership of intellectual property rights in teaching and scholarly materials created by a member of academic staff during the course of his employment shall belong to the University, which shall be entitled to use such materials... the University shall allow the author thereof to publish and disseminate the said teaching and scholarly materials provided that the University is duly acknowledged in such publications..."

Would any disturbing of the age-old civilised rapport between authors, editors and publishers translate into "a propulsive force" on the road to excellence trumpeted by our political leaders?

By definition a University of Studies is and should be a space for freedom and open encounter; it is that kind of a "production house". Past achievements have been the greater for their having been registered generally on minimal pay and with meagre resources. Out of a sense of vocation some of us even repatriated from the emigration (sometimes from bigger and better known universities) to continue where we had left off, losing out financially (but, it seems, not only financially, which is worse).

Rather than a resort to such compulsive-restrictive tactics, positive thinking would suggest incentives such as merit awards (within given parameters of legitimately adjudicated excellence). Works in progress are already listed in every academic's annual performance evaluation report. Why duplicate, the further to bureaucratise? Agreements have been successfully negotiated in the past without putting basic working conditions to the toss, as the current set of negotiators seem bent to do, possibly over-playing their hand or conjuring misplaced blueprints.

Would "commercial exploitation" henceforth be the incentive for our scholars, who have helped mould a nation-state, to start approaching excellence? Will the likely consequences of a litany of strictures continue to allow the international recognition of our Alma Mater as a University of Studies?

It is understandable, even laudable, that a University that may invest huge amounts in sophisticated equipment for scientific experiment in specified areas expects to share in any income from patented inventions. May such attempts succeed.

Applying such a reasoning to the putting of pen to paper in other disciplines does not follow. It is understandable that a University should try to initiate courses that are financially viable in themselves. In some respects this has already proved possible, even successful. One cannot but sympathise with efforts to have our one and only ever-expanding University (which pays its students stipends) less dependent on state funding. However, we are riding on the horns of a known dilemma: in public education such expectations are not a given or even a desideratum as a normative principle. That was partly the mistake of 1977 et sq.

Malta has the lowest reading rates in the EU, with the membership of which it is trying to cope; it lacks mineral resources and a critical mass; is concerned with retaining a native vernacular as a literary language not a pidgin, and surviving as an identifiable nation into the foreseeable future.

Even as the future beckons, the past matters too. It is our only tried recipe. More than enough dubious changes were brought about by the 1979 and 1988 Education Acts. It would be a grave political error to alienate creativity and antagonise opinion formers aspiring to the cutting edge of knowledge by bowing to any pseudo-utilitarian rush from which, history teaches us, it may not be so easy to recover.

"Commercial exploitation" is not and has never been the ethos animating our Alma Mater as a community of learning.