As it happens, I wasn’t a signatory to the recent letter, signed by many academics, expressing concern that the recent changes to the university accreditation process will lower standards.

My eyebrows shot up, nonetheless, when Martin Scicluna, who chairs the National Commission for Further and Higher Education (the accrediting body), suggested that the academics might have misread the relevant legal notice.

If only it were that simple.

Let’s begin by clearing the deck from possible distractions.

The legal notice might or might not have been changed to serve Hani Al Saleh, the Jordanian construction magnate proposing to build the American University of Malta. (I myself don’t think so.) But even if that investor goes away we’d still be left with the changed criteria. They’re worth discussing on their own terms.

Scicluna – and, separately, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo – have responded to their critics with two criticisms of their own.

First, they say, the critics are confusing the minimum quantity of courses offered (the minimum number is now lower than it was) with the actual quality. There are many institutions of tertiary education which have a narrow offering but are of world-class quality.

Second, by arguing against the change the critics are out of synch with current trends in higher education. There is an increasing number of institutions, bearing the title or status of university, specialising in a narrow range of subjects, such as the arts, or law.

The barely veiled accusation is that it’s the critics’ own stance that threatens the quality of higher education in Malta. The world is changing.

The earlier criteria have become too simplistic for the way things are now. To stick up for them is to stick up for a standard that is dysfunctional.

In those arguments there is a lot that is true. The problem, however, is with what they leave out.

First, there is no doubt that the quality of a course does not depend on the total number of different courses offered. The academic world has many colleges and institutes offering a narrow range of degrees, including doctorates, recognised to be world class.

We do not have to look very far. This country hosts the International Maritime Law Institute (Imli).

That’s a narrow specialisation. But, over a quarter of a century and under the direction of David Attard, a world authority in his subject, the institute has continued to attract top teachers, students from every corner in the world (including North Korea), international funding and the endorsement of the International Maritime Organisation.

Being concerned that the change in criteria lowers the bar does not mean the previous criteria were adequate

Imli graduates can be found staffing senior legal roles around the world. The Imli brand is such that Oxford University Press recently published the first volume of The Imli manual on international maritime law.

Notice Imli’s name, however. It’s an institute, not a university. No shame or lower rank in that. Indeed, Imli’s gravitas is derived in part from the fact that it does not try to be what it is not. Being a university is about more than the quality of the courses.

But what about the argument that – whatever Imli and other distinguished centres and institutes have chosen to do – there are indeed others, offering a narrow range of courses, that carry the title of university?

True. For example, there are some 13 German technical universities, specialising in engineering and scientific subjects. There is the University of Law (UK), and the University of the Arts, London, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia – all top-ranked in their respective fields. But four points are worth noticing about them.

First, their very name indicates their relatively narrow specialisation. All but one of the relevant German universities carry the term ‘technical’ as part of their name. The exception is the Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, which, however, gives a broad hint of its own by carrying the name of one of the inventors of calculus.

Second, all had a prior distinguished history as a college (or set of colleges) or institute of higher learning.

It took time to acquire the rank of university and the waiting wasn’t just due to some accreditation process.

Third, the range of disciplines might be narrow but usually the programmes offered are very diverse and comprehensive. For example, the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) offers 41 undergraduate and graduate programmes.

Fourth, these universities usually have a large student component, running from 15,000 to over 25,000. Philadelphia, with fewer than 2,000 students, is one exception but cements its university credentials by fulfilling the other three criteria and having an endowment of $45 million.

Nothing we have heard about the proposed American University of Malta suggests that it will have even one of those four features (and nothing has been said about its endowment, either).

So, which established universities is it being compared to? If actual names were given, it would do more than anything that has been said so far to allay concern that the bar is being lowered for what makes a university.

One point needs underlining. Being concerned that the change in criteria lowers the bar does not – repeat, not – mean the previous criteria were adequate.

There is a case to be made that, by being mainly concerned with the number of courses and degrees, the previous criteria were simplistic. There’s no reason to be satisfied with them.

In late 2010, this column criticised the then government for having a creationist, rather than a scientific, view of university education. I said then that simply investing money, without regard for how higher education is evolving, was going to leave the entire field maladapted for the changes taking place. Institutional evolution was sorely needed, which involved inviting multiple universities to set up a campus in Malta.

But the evolution needs to build on the model being set by developed knowledge-economies – not just their kind of combination of teaching and research but also their kind of outreach to industry and civil society. Bartolo and Scicluna have both pointed to general trends in Europe. But they haven’t indicated any detailed parallel.

The examples we have to hand don’t clarify matters on their own. Middlesex is an established university in the UK already. Barts is part of one. The proposed AUM just doesn’t seem to fit.

Until further clarification, people will continue to wonder why there’s such a rush to give university status to Hani Al Saleh’s project when the established pattern in Europe – the one which we’re saying we want to emulate, at any rate – is to wait: first, to allow an institution to establish itself as entity of higher learning over several years and only then to accredit it as a university.

Until then, no matter the assurances, the fears that the bar is being lowered will still remain. Those fears will paralyse the discussions we should be having about the place of universities – note the plural – in Malta’s social, economic and political renewal.

ranierfsadni@europe.com