In his address to University freshers last week, rector Juanito Camilleri encouraged more students to participate in Degreeplus, the voluntary skills enhancement programme which is now being further expanded, and in exchange programmes with other universities.
Launched by the University in partnership with Bank of Valletta last October, Degreeplus has been one of the University's most successful projects. The programme officially recognises students' involvement in a variety of extra-curricular activities. It encourages students to take up interests outside campus and beyond their formal curricular, examination-centered academic formation.
It offers a programme of activities related to culture and heritage, entrepreneurship, career development, music, wellness and sport, ICT, voluntary work and languages. The sports activities include all kinds of sport from football to Kendo and Tai Chi.
This year, the Degreeplus is also offering career enhancement opportunities. It is encouraging to see that the programme organisers are open-minded as well as being innovative and ready to work with one and all to make the programme better. However, one needs to be careful not to move back to what should actually be curricular activities in the syllabus of all departments. Degreeplus should continue to emphasise that it is extra-curricular activities that it supports.
At the same time it is still important that the student associations continue to organise their own cultural and social activities. Students often organise evening activities that offer a better social environment than the weekend routine visits to Paceville. Some departments are also presenting students' work in symposiums which provide socialising opportunities for students.
It may be a good idea to try to make the University campus come alive also during weekends as happens at US universities. For example, one should consider opening facilities such as the canteen at Student House, and the library, on Sunday evenings to provide a venue where students and staff could meet to socialise, or to finish their academic work and prepare for the coming week.
In the not-too-distant-past, the University Sports Club and Student House were hubs of activity, and this notwithstanding the smaller number of enrolled students at the time.
An activity that certainly still puts the University on the cultural map is the yearly Evenings on Campus held during summer. Although this year's edition may have lacked the usual pomp and intensive publicity, it did match previous editions in quality.
The University Foundation Day anniversary concert, held last November for the first time at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, successfully created an atmosphere condusive to cultural activities, which seem to have been somewhat neglected notwithstanding the large number of students and talents present at the University.
A significant amount of work has already been done to try to enhance extra-curricular activities on campus. However, much more needs to be done to give University life an international flavour matching that of other international universities.
Last week was one of the first bad weeks the University has had since the 1980s. Instead of attending the opening ceremony of the new academic year, staff had to gather at a union rally. But the worst thing that happened was Finance Minister Tonio Fenech's threat that if staff unions do not accept the salary package, they would have to lump the miserly salary increase imposed by the government.
Hopefully, the times when the government acts as a bully and attacks the intelligentsia, whether verbally or otherwise, are past.
So was the minister speaking tongue-in-cheek?