Call for tougher entry criteria to law course

Law students have called for more restrictive entry requirements for the University law degree course in order to remove the perception that it is a “waste bin”.

“It is both absurd and illogical to have several hundred students join the course so freely only for them to fail at a later stage and drop out either due to lack of interest or simply because law is not suitable for them,” the Law Students Association said in a report.

Besides recommendations, the report includes results of a survey carried out among law students. It was presented on Tuesday to University Rector Juanito Camilleri and Faculty of Laws Dean Ian Refalo during Freshers’ Week.

The association said a change in course requirements was “essential” – not by restricting the number of students who could apply every year but by tightening the grades required to enroll.

At present, students are eligible to enter the course if they have a grade C or better in any two A levels or equivalent and a grade C pass in a number of intermediate subjects. Instead, the association argues, the A level subjects required should be Maltese at grade C or better and English or French.

The course should not be about failing students but about giving “bright and eager” ones the opportunity to excel. The association also complained that the human resources and lecture halls were “grossly insufficient” to cope with the 250 or so first-year students.

Many students, it said, felt that the regulation which allowed “mature” students – people aged over 23 – to start the course was “unfair”. Being a mature student gave significant “leeway” to people who failed to reach the entry requirements but who could still start the course by “simply waiting a few years until they were 23 years old”, the association said.

It called for entry requirements for mature students to be made equally stringent, not only for law but for all courses at university.

In the survey, 85 per cent of the students questioned said their secondary area of studies should be eliminated because it amounted to nothing more than extra stress and accumulating extra credits.

With the exception of a few select subjects such as European Studies and International Relations, the secondary area involved a lot of work and “failed to adequately substantiate” the main area, the association noted.

Removing the secondary area would help reduce the current six-year course by one year, it added. This would allow students to focus more on law and allow more room for specialisation.

Seventy per cent of the students felt lectures were not challenging enough, while another 48 per cent felt they were not well prepared.

As many as 82 per cent complained they were only taught the law and not how to apply, interpret and analyse it. More emphasis was needed on legal practice as many students graduate “as experts in legal theory but with little knowledge of how to apply it”.

Many law students felt they became “fully-fledged parrots” by the end of the year. Among other things, they criticised the mono­tonous tones of the lecturers, who more often than not dictated, the lack of discussion and the way the lecturers rushed through the vast amount of material that had to be covered.

Many students praised the late President Emeritus and professor Guido de Marco for his teaching style, describing his lectures as thought-provoking and “different”.