Silvio De Bono. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier

There is really no reason why students at Mcast should be pigeonholed into just one institute, the college president Silvio De Bono believes.

“Wouldn’t it be excellent if students could attend courses from different institutes? Don’t our agriculture students need to be IT literate, for example?” he said, noting that Mcast would be the first vocational institution to offer cross-curricular options (the University of Malta does this through the Degree Plus programme).

“Yes, it would be a logistical nightmare but we intend to start offering the possibility and add various options as time goes on,” he said.

This is one of the three pillars on which Mr De Bono is building the Mcast strategy for the future.

Mr De Bono was appointed the president of the Mcast board of governors last July for a three-year term.

“My work as an academic and as a management consultant specialising in organisation behaviour has made me a change agent,” he said.

“And there are a lot of changes being made right now. It is a very exciting time for us...”

The numbers speak for themselves. From 1,500 students in the first year, Mcast now caters to 6,800 full-time students and another 4,000 part-time ones. It offers 150 full-time programmes across its 10 institutes and Gozo, with over 700 staff.

And the future is also looking bright, with a new Performing Arts Institute planned for the next academic year and a Water Technology Institute being set up with the Water Services Corporation.

Mcast also recently signed a memorandum of association with Malta Enterprise through which it will set up an entrepreneurship centre at the KBIC facility in Corradino.

“We are currently in discussions with the theatre venues in Malta – St James Cavalier, Mediterranean Conference Centre and Manoel Theatre – in an attempt to forge a partnership for the Performing Arts Institute, at least until the new campus is ready.

“It is pointless to use my resources and try to build empires when it would make so much more sense to collaborate and use existing resources,” he said.

The second pillar of the strategy is based on inculcating a culture of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship into students, something that the KBIC agreement will spearhead.

“We will be taking a two- or three-phase approach but eventually I would like all the courses to have an element of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. I am a firm believer that this culture will help to make students better employers or better employees.”

The centre at KBIC will only take a few months to get up and running. It will be used as a halfway house for budding start-ups, between Mcast and having their own premises – perhaps at KBIC itself.

“We will select students who have promising end-of-year projects, which will be vetted by a board, and then offer them the chance to be mentored for a year or two, with the help of private enterprise too. It will be much more than an extended classroom!”

The third pillar will be based on apprenticeships.

“There were a number of schemes in the past, administered by the Employment and Training Corporation, which were very good but it is time to assess how much we were getting from them. And the Drydocks used to offer very good apprenticeships.

“But we do not believe that employers were doing it right... It needs to be work-based learning. We need new ideas...” he said.

Many of his plans depend on the private sector and he is trying to find a structure which would enable Mcast to have regular contact with the constituted bodies – with the MCESD emerging as his favourite.

“If we had this regular contact point, then we could start to cooperate on entrepreneurship and on apprenticeships,” he said. “In Germany, there is a similar tripartite set-up involving employers and unions – the guilds – which ensure that any changes in industry and the economy are passed on to the academic institutions.

“Malta should not be reactive, setting up academic options for sectors once they are already active here. The lead time is too long. This is what we are doing now for iGaming, for example. We need to be more proactive.”

He is also passionate about changing the perception of Mcast, saying it is clearly not the place for those who “drop out” or “fail”.

“It is another path, a different one. The way I see it, Mcast is for students failed by the system... We are not just a ‘non-exam’ option. We offer diploma and degree courses. And there is a strong tie between vocational courses and employment. In fact, the ministry in Malta has a portfolio which includes both, probably the only one in Europe.

“But we can do a lot more. We have a pilot project under way to capture students who drop out of fifth form without a school-leaving certificate.”

Another oft-ignored fact is that Mcast is also involved in research, with projects funded by the EU as well as the Malta Council for Science and Technology.

Of course, the strategy is only one part of the radical changes under way. From his office, you can see the massive new campus taking shape.The first phase will be ready within a few months, with the applied science building already open, the business and commerce one open in a few weeks and the student house ready for the next academic year.

Phase two will see the plaza replaced by a library and the existing business and commerce institute will be razed and replaced by a car park. “We are discussing the demolition of other buildings as we want to get all the institutes on to the same campus, although we would retain satellites – such as St James and the Water Services Corporation – for off-campus sessions.”

He looked through the window, watching hundreds students walking across the plaza or sitting in the shade.

“I never realised to what extent this role would engulf me. But I am really very happy to be here. This is not a role; it is a passion,” he said.