Last week’s The Sunday Times carried a piece about the sustainability, or lack of it, of University stipends. As well the paper might, for two groups in particular have been deafeningly silent on the issue.

Students are trading in a huge chunk of University funding for their monthly stipend cheques- Mark-Anthony Falzon

First, academics. There is an unspoken rule among us that we should not let ourselves be dragged into the stipends business. Not that the subject isn’t raised, over morning coffee or maybe a snatch of conversation on the way to a lecture. But never in a sustained and certainly not a public way.

I think there are three lines of reasoning behind our reluctance. The first is what we might call the ‘let them wallow’ one. Just as the stipends crisis – if there is one – was brought about by vote-grabbing politicians, it is now their job to solve it.

There is some, but not much, truth to this. It holds only inasmuch as we detach ourselves from politics and relegate it to party matters, to what the Italians would call ‘la classe politica’.

Second, I sense that many of us are afraid that speaking a bit louder would poison our relationship with students. I reject this outright. I’d like to think that students would rather be taught by people who were prepared critically to engage them than be patronised by self-appointed champions who stood by them no matter what.

The third reason is the broader context, which would give Antonio Gramsci a heart attack. In brief, academics in Malta have been largely reluctant to speak their minds. Many of us also hold positions outside of University that are hardly low-profile or apolitical, to be sure. But it seldom happens that academics, as a body, take a stand on anything remotely political.

That is a choice I respect. There’s a lot to be said for the ivory tower, for scholars who go about their work unfazed by the affairs of state. Then again the fact they’re paid public money to keep doing so rests on a social contract which is itself ultimately rooted in politics. Unfazed they may be, but hardly untouched.

The second group that has sought zealously to avoid discussing stipends is that of politicians. Unlike academics, they have no excuses for doing so. Indeed the whole situation as it currently stands is fairly pathetic, truth be told.

That’s because it’s a strange mix of babble and silence. Inasmuch as stipends are mentioned the spirit is one of sloganism: “Our party was the one ...”, “we pledge never to touch ...”, “we will continue to invest ...”, and such and such.

This is coupled with a forensic, nay inquisitorial, attention to every little clue that might ‘expose’ the ‘real intentions’ of the opposition. Heaven forfend Evarist Bartolo or Edward Scicluna should but whisper the word, all hell breaks loose.

The vocabulary is telling as it is breathtaking. The former, because ‘We will never ever touch stipends’ implies that stipends are untouchable, unfit for political consumption.

The latter because they should be anything but. It’s truly extraordinary that an issue of such ongoing urgency and complexity should be confined to the temple of untouchability.

This I think is partly whatthe Rector had in mind in last Sunday’s interview with this newspaper. He certainly gave the ‘take it whether or not you need it’ culture a run for its money. Perhaps more importantly, he said that “unless a serious critical discussion takes place, ideally driven by the student community itself, the country will overlook certain options or embark on important initiatives too late”.

The Rector is saying that the stipends matter is rather like income tax returns, or bills generally. It is quite useless to shuffle them to the bottom of a drawer and hope they will go away. The only thing that will happen is that you will wake up one unfine morning to a power cut which is not shared by the neighbours.

I’d also like to take my boss up on the bit about the debate being ideally driven by students themselves. On one hand the word ‘ideally’ is aptly chosen. One cannot force students to drive anything, least of all a debate about something that concerns a monthly cheque. Besides, there is a risk that any debate would be hijacked by the party minions populating the key student associations.

Even so, I think the Rector is right. I was much encouraged by what Philip Leone Ganado, a 22-year old University student, had to say about stipends.

Without wishing to patronise him, I find much of what Leone Ganado writes on various subjects completely refreshing. I also think he is not a one-off.

Thing is, he put his finger on it. Stipends are not just about what the students are getting. More importantly, they’re also about what students are not getting. They’re a trade-off dressed in the borrowed robes of a gift.

University currently gets about €45 million in annual funding from the government. On top of that, students (not University) get about €15 million in stipend money. In spite of the fact that those 15 million are billed as an ‘investment in education’, nota cent of them touches theinstitution’s coffers.

In essence, students are trading in a huge chunk of funding for their monthly cheques. What this means is that they are missing out on a better library, better-equipped laboratories, and so on.

The question is not whether or not stipends are sustainable but whether or not it is sustainable to keep not pouring enough money into University.

One might argue that the library and laboratories, however impoverished, are only accessible to people because of stipends in the first place. I’m not so sure. Most of our students work part-time for example, cheque or no cheque. And we can hardly keep up with the exploding number of MA applicants – in spite of the fact that MA students receive no stipend and actually pay for their studies.

It would be mad to try to exhaust the discussion in a newspaper column. Stipends have become deeply ingrained in our education policy and it simply is not possible to extract them by means of a few sentences.

Trouble is, unless we’re prepared to say more we may well end up with a monster part lame duck and part sacred cow.

mafalzon@hotmail.com