German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who died on Wednesday night aged 80, had tried to put an end to the student-worker scheme introduced by the Labour government in the late 1970s.
"Others elsewhere in the world have tried such a scheme and failed. It produces either unhappy workers or under-qualified students, or both. It adds nothing to education or to social integration," Prof. Dahrendorf had told then Prime Minister Dom Mintoff in a letter in 1978.
After resigning from a Royal University of Malta commission he chaired, Prof. Dahrendorf said he could not continue to be identified with higher education policies, which "offend my values, are out of line with my experience and contradict the recommendations which I have made in the past".
In the letter, dated June 6, 1978, he told Mr Mintoff he could no longer advise him on higher education, either informally or as a member of the commission.
Later that year, he wrote in the Higher Education Supplement of The Times of London that Malta's University had come under considerable pressure "and one must wonder whether it will survive the next two years, let alone 200".
This public tiff with Mr Mintoff "had a big psychological effect" in Malta, philosopher Fr Peter Serracino Inglott said when contacted yesterday.
"He (Prof. Dahrendorf) was very much against the student-worker scheme and this continued to diminish its popularity," Fr Serracino Inglott said.
The then Labour government still went ahead with the reform and the student-worker scheme - which saw students studying for six months and working for the rest of the year - was introduced in 1978.
"The government wanted a scheme that would allow students to understand better the subject they were studying because they would have the opportunity to work in that field," Philip Muscat, who was Education Minister at the time, recalled.
Prof. Dahrendorf met Mr Mintoff in 1970, when he visited the island as a member of the German government, and according to Dr Muscat the two became "big friends".
"But he did not agree with the reforms."
According to Fr Serracino Inglott, the German sociologist was willing to make a number of concessions, including agreeing to pass on the Argotti botanical gardens from the hands of the University to the Agriculture Department. "He was ready to make concessions in issues he thought were not of principle," he said.
When he was awarded an honorary degree in 1992, Prof. Dahrendorf said the University had gone through a difficult time and lost a lot of its autonomy after his resignation.
When Prof. Dahrendorf landed in Malta he had been picked up by Fr Serracino Inglott, who was University rector at the time.
"They had just changed the roads around the airport and I went round and ended up in the same place," Fr Serracino Inglott said, adding that the German sociologist was laughing and later wrote about the experience.
Fr Serracino Inglott described Prof. Dahrendorf as an original sociologist who was not a follower of either Karl Marx or Max Weber, the founders of sociology.
"He remains most famous for his belief that we are living in a post-liberal democracy and believed the biggest political problems are moral ones, mainly revolving around bioethics," he said, adding that Prof. Dahrendorf also believed these issues should not be decided through a referendum because they were too complicated.
President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami described Prof. Dahrendorf as a "leading personality" and a great sociologist. "He was very influential," he said.
Prof. Dahrendorf was a member of the German Parliament, a Parliamentary Secretary of State in Germany's Foreign Affairs Ministry, and a European Commissioner.
Prof. Dahrendorf was governor of the London School of Economics and adopted British citizenship in 1988.
He died of cancer in Cologne.