Maltese newspapers last week reported four items in connection with the University of Malta. The first is the kind of item that one prefers not to have to report upon.

There was a problem with the last question of the Matsec pure mathematics examination at intermediate level. Such incidents should not happen but, unfortunately sometimes they do, showing that our Alma Mater (‘the nurturing mother’ or University from which most Maltese graduates hail, at least for their first and second degrees) is not perfect. The Matsec Board apologised and promised to take steps so that students would not be disadvantaged.

Perfect our University is not, but it surely is extremely useful to Maltese society, as well as an institution that makes us proud as evidenced by two other media coverages reported in the same week.

Last Wednesday Times of Malta informed us that the University is investing in the laboratory of its Department of Systems and Control Engineering so that the laboratory will be used to treat Maltese patients who suffer from selected neuromuscular conditions. The beneficiaries will be Maltese patients who will now be given the service by our University and will not have to travel abroad for a 30-minute test.

On the same day, l-Oriżżont gave us another great piece of news. The Breast Cancer Research Group of Malta’s University have made important discoveries that will be of great help to those needing therapy for breast cancer. L-Oriżżont took pride in telling its readers (and similarly do I) that the Maltese researchers were invited to present the result of their research in a series of international seminars.

These are just two research projects out of vast crop of research-based initiatives originated by the University for the benefit of our society. I mention these two projects as they are those reported this week.

A University’s value lies in its research programmes and high-standard publications by its academic staff as much as it lies in its quality teaching programmes. And over the years our University has been making great strides ahead in all these three sectors. Besides, during the last seven years or so, the construction of new buildings and the addition of new faculties has been more than impressive.

Today our Alma Mater is a robust institution with 14 faculties, 19 institutes, 10 centres, a School of Performing Arts and a junior college catering for 14,000 students. These include 750 students from 82 countries. The number of students graduating each year is so large that in 2014 the University had to hold 14 graduation ceremonies.

The main campus is situated at tal-Qroqq but there are two smaller campuses in Valletta and Gozo. The Valletta campus is housed in the Old University Building that dates back to the founding of the Collegium Melitense in 1592.

This is all about money not quality education. It is the same mentality which made the government sell our citizenship

Today, the Valletta Campus is also the venue of the University’s International Collaborative Programmes (ICP). Joint degrees with prestigious foreign universities are offered from this campus, which hosts: James Madison University, Tusculum College, South Texas College of Law, Luther College, St John University and Australians Studying Abroad.

While Malta’s University is lauded by these prestigious universities which collaborate with it, it is ironically being rubbished by Malta’s Prime Minister, who described it as “a closed shop system lorded over as it is by the few, for the few”. The unjust and false jibe will earn Muscat no Gettysburg style fame.

In the service of whose agenda is the Prime Minister rubbishing a University which is really ‘tagħna lkoll’ to laud to the skies an institution which is just aspiring to be accredited as a university?

This fledgling institution will only make the grade as a university because Muscat just lowered the standards to permit it to offer only a fraction of the extensive programmes offered by our University.

Why does the Prime Minister belittle a University which has been serving Maltese students and Maltese society and beyond for hundreds of years but exalts a ‘university’ which is hoping to cater mainly for RTKs (rich, thick kids) from North Africa and other Arab nations who cannot make it to a proper and prestigious university?

The mind boggles.

This brings me to the fourth University-related media report, mainly the coverage given to a statement signed by 180 academics and counting. This short statement expressed the concern of the signatories (yours truly included) on the lack of transparency in the process and careful assessment in the selection of the project itself as well as of the proposed site. It also lobbied for decisions that will serve the common good through the strengthening of quality education and the protection of land which lies outside development boundaries.

The worldview underpinning this statement is totally different from the neo-liberal and overtly capitalist mentality that undergirds the project about the proposed ‘university’ at Żonqor.

The statement signed by academics understands the common good from, among other things, the perspective of quality education and the safeguarding of the environment. The mentality behind the setting of a ‘university’ at Żonqor sees the common good only in terms of monetary benefits. If it makes money it must be good, the capitalist mantra goes.

The proposed ‘university’ offers no realistic prospects to Maltese students but promises more money to restaurants in the area. No research coming from this ‘university’ will benefit Maltese society as does research from our University, as this is not a research-based university; but tenants can make a buck. The South will lose an important environmental lung but developers will increase their coffers.

This is all about money not quality education. It is the same mentality which made the government sell our citizenship. It is the same mentality which looks at people as consumers and not as citizens. It trumps short-term gains instead of long-term ones. And if our Prime Minister has to rubbish our own University in the process, so be it.

Cynic Malta has never had it so good.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt