Two things happened to me recently, which made me reflect on the University in our island. First, being a member of the congregation at the University of Oxford, I received a letter informing me that the university was about to issue a £750 million bond redeemable in 2117. The main aim of the bond is to bolster Oxford’s investment and secure more financial independence.
The objectives laid down in the letter are clear: “We will use this money to invest in academic projects, which are strategically important for all of us. Investing wisely will help us remain at the forefront of global research, pre-eminent in our teaching, and a great place to work.
“We will have to be clear-headed about how we invest. The proceeds must only go towards projects, which will advance our academic mission and benefit our successors for generations to come. It cannot be expended on ongoing activities, and in no way relieves us of the responsibility to operate as efficiently as we possibly can.”
I could not help but wonder how a bond issue would work if replicated for the University of Malta, given that the proposed Bill could give the University the authority to issue such an instrument to guarantee its financial future.
Would our public be willing to invest in a bond that would give our national University an independence like it has never known?
Of course, I’m not in the best position to discuss how the administration of such a bond would work on a daily basis. Suffice to say that Oxford itself has outsourced this, and rightly so. After all, we can’t be using it to invest in our college wine cellars.
Truth be told, if the likes of Oxford University are looking at these new methods of financing their institutions, it is time for the University of Malta to also explore such possibilities and not rely solely on the generosity of the government and its people. Financial independence must be a goal for any university in the 21st century.
Many have bandied about the argument that the government funds (and has always funded) the University and should therefore control it through a majority on council or a new governing body.
My view is slightly different – government projects are financed through our taxes and it is the people who should be the ultimate stakeholders in our children’s future. It should be up to us to decide that the University can be run as an independent institution, as we hope that our judiciary and our police are.
What is more important than the education of our people? How can we trust any government, elected for a short period of time, to keep an eye on the long-term future of our country’s education?
It is here that academics, should come into their own – be at the forefront of their fields, with an eye out for new horizons, designing curricula and introducing courses to benefit the students of the future.
How can we trust any government, elected for a short period of time, to keep an eye on the long-term future of our country’s education?
I’ll now come to my second thought: the first graduation ceremony of the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA), where one student graduated with a Ph.D. and others with a Master’s in astroinformatics. Bumbling my way through my Latin eulogies, I could not help but reflect how the birth of an institute, deemed to specialise in the more esoteric of academic subjects, would fare under the proposed governance structure of the University of Malta.
When I had first presented the case for ISSA to the Senate nearly five years ago, I focussed on the importance that space-based technology plays in our modern society, drawing examples from the invention of the nappy to stop nasty accidents in space, to the use of GPS for navigation systems around the world.
Beaming like a proud parent, I was more than just pleased that the students graduated with flying colours. I was happy that they had immediately found jobs, mainly in the gaming sector where their knowledge of statistics and informatics is highly sought after.
As I sat through the orations preceding the conferment of the degrees, I could not help but reflect how difficult it would be to keep these bright minds in academia when a glitzy financial package awaited them on the outside.
With research not featuring highly in the proposed Bill, how will their research be pursued and how will it be possible for the University to compete with an industry whose appetite for high-flying graduates in this sector seems insatiable, at least at the moment?
What is clear is that the students graduating from the University as it stands today, are second to none, with many going abroad to further their studies, and others finding employment, sometimes even before completing their courses.
This uptake is not only a sign of a booming economy, but also a mark that graduates from the Faculty of Science – including those in subjects such as astronomy, which some deem to be a more exotic subject – are leaving university with highly-employable skills.
This is a sign that the University is working and is working well. Tweaks are needed for a more efficient marshalling of resources, but it is not clear to me why an upheaval of the governance structure is required.
If anything, the direction the University should take is the opposite one, seeking more financial independence and looking towards becoming a fully autonomous institution over the next 10 years.
Kristian Zarb Adami is an astrophysics professor at the University of Malta and the University of Oxford.