Students from the US, Malta, Germany, eastern Europe and other countries last month started two one-year Integrated Masters Programmes (IMPs) that the University is running in conjunction with US universities at its Valletta campus at the Old University Building.
About 30 students, including 12 Maltese, are attending a Masters programme in Sustainable Environment Resources Management (Serm) being jointly run with James Madison University, Virginia, while 21 students from a mix of countries are enrolled in an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Masters programme being run together with San Diego State University, California.
"I am pleasantly surprised at the level of interest we received from American students," said Albert Caruana, the University rector's delegate for the IMPs. Both courses have American accreditation and both local and American lecturers teach on each programme. On successfully completing the IMPs, the students are awarded degrees from both the University of Malta and the respective US universities.
With an application fee of €100 and a course fee at €12,500 per student, the courses are not cheap by local standards, and are mainly aimed at foreign students, who also have to meet their own accommodation and other expenses. However, Prof. Caruana said "the dual degree model formula appears to be quite attractive to students; it's like the students did the course in America". In fact, almost all the Maltese students who applied for the course also applied for their fee to be supported under the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme and other government scholarship schemes.
Prof. Caruana described the Serm programme as a science-based degree with many applications in the area of sustainable resource management, which made it very relevant to today's circumstances. He said both programmes focussed on "niche subjects", adding that "in the case of Serm we have a product that is rather unique that makes us stand out in the market, and is not that easy to copy".
The same could be said of the IMC programme. The University could have simply offered an international marketing degree, which in itself would have had a certain amount of attraction, "but we are probably one of the few European universities to have combined a marketing degree with a marketing communications degree," said Prof. Caruana. "It is more unique, so we do not have that much direct competition."
However, the University found it hard to find enough sufficiently qualified students to justify launching the courses, and as a consequence the courses had to be postponed by a year. "Our entry criteria - a second upper undergraduate degree - was a bit stiff," he admits. San Diego and James Madison were also quite demanding in other respects. For example, in certain cases students needed to have passed the Graduate Management Aptitude Test.
Most of the marketing was done via Google and Facebook. "We had ad-words on Google, so when people keyed in words such as 'masters in marketing', our course came up," Prof. Caruana said. "On Facebook we ran two linked sites so that when visitors entered they could start chatting with other interested students and it has created a lot of 'word of mouse'. It worked quite well," he quipped.
The University plans to launch new IMPs in future. Prof. Caruana revealed that there are already three other programmes in the pipeline at different stages of preparation. The most advanced one is with the
**University of Western Michigan, on the subject of criminology, law and public policy. Another is being planned with George Washington University on conflict resolution and Mediterranean security, and there is a chance of another with University of Maryland on counselling. Prof. Caruana said he hoped the new IMPs would be launched next year to start in the 2011-2012 academic year.
However, Prof. Caruana is well aware of the various challenges facing the University to sustain and expand the IMPs.
"When you open a course you pick up latent demand, but then when you come to offer the course in the second year there may be a problem to find a sufficient number of students, especially in a specialised market," he said.
With half the tutors coming from the US universities concerned, the courses have a high cost to cover. "We need 15 students more or less to break even," he said, adding that while this was not a phenomenal number, there is fierce competition for every student.
In future, he hoped the University would have the resources to take part in some of the international student fairs, and recruit students directly, in addition to relying on agents.
Another big hurdle to overcome in the European market is that the cost of Masters programmes is generally not very high because of state support and subsidies. "For example, in Italy it costs about €3,000 and in Germany it is free," Prof. Caruana said. Nevertheless, he said, the two IMPs already launched had still managed to attract students from European countries primarily because they are American degrees.
The IMPs are also an attempt to breath new life into the Old University Building. While some parts of it are in a relatively good state, Prof. Caruana said the whole building needed substantial investment to upgrade it.
To cater for the two courses, the University has already renovated half of the second floor of the building along Merchants Street which was previously occupied by a section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The walls and windows were repaired and repainted, new wiring passed, terraced floor panelleling, semi-circular seating and modern video equipment installed to set up new lecture rooms. Several other rooms were also renovated to serve a multi-purpose or break-out rooms now, and possibly transformed into additional lecture rooms in future.
"Given the state of the University's finances we have to adopt a phased approach. We can't justify doing up the whole building before we start running the first courses. So we are taking an incremental approach," said Prof. Caruana. "If we get one or two of the other courses going we will have enough to take the entire floor and we will continue to renovate the other wing of the building along St Paul's Street."
The University rector has made it clear he would like the entire building to return to the University. It has already entered into agreement with the Mediterreanean Institute Theatre Programme (MITP) which occupies part of the ground floor. The next target is for Heritage Malta to vacate the rest of the ground floor.
In future, the University is also interested to acquire a premises close to the Old University Building to use as a hall of residence for the foreign students enrolled on the IMPs.
For further information view the website www.um.edu.mt/imp or contact IMP administrator Mario Cassar on e-mail mario.l.cassar@um.edu.mt.