Undergraduates in this country seem to have little idea of how lucky they are. They live on a tiny island that has a university. That's fortunate in itself. And unlike many of their counterparts overseas, they do not pay tuition fees or have to fork out rent to live in sub-standard housing.
On the contrary, through the stipend system - considered outdated abroad in this day and age - they are actually paid to be there and even have enough left over to buy beer. As the Yorkshiremen in the famous Monty Python sketch would say, that is pure "luxury", even though it is one the modern taxpayer can ill afford.
The institution they attend also manages to cater for an increasingly wide range of subjects and finds enough staff members, the large majority of whom are native, to carry out this task. This is no mean feat either.
That not all of them exceed expectations, as a recent survey conducted by the University Students' Council (KSU) found, should not be news. With a catchment area of 400,000, when a country like Britain has 60 million to choose from, as well as numerous foreigners who want to take up lecturers' posts, it is difficult in every walk of life to find great talent. The country's highest learning institution is no exception.
This, of course, does not mean certain shortcomings cannot be raised and addressed. Everything possible should be done, within the University's inherent limitations, to ensure lecturers are able not only to serve students' needs but also to undertake research - one of the major benchmarks against which any academic institution is judged.
From that point of view, a survey of this nature might offer an indication of the state of affairs, though many lecturers will already know, through personal relationships with their students, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Students know too. So who is it serving? And for the reasons Mark-Anthony Falzon points out (on page 15), the survey's questions were woefully misdirected.
It is not just the contents of this survey that are wrong, but also the subject matter. The students may have been better off asking some questions of themselves.
They have a university, yet a substantial number of them do not treat it as one. Instead they see it as no more than an extension of their school. They talk about homework and lessons and some even ask their lecturers to highlight relevant chapters for them in their textbooks.
There is little innovative thinking and a marked deterioration in students' ability to use the English language, which, while not the mother tongue for most, is the lingua franca of the world. Their predecessors who graduated 30, 40, 50 years ago, did not suffer from such a problem and their level of Maltese remained unaffected. There are, therefore, no excuses.
Modern day students go to their 'lessons' in cars, complain about the parking problem (try explaining that to an Oxbridge student who cycles in the rain), and then return to their parents' homes where food and creature comforts are waiting for them.
There is an abject failure to understand that a university is not just a place where one learns a subject (though that is undoubtedly an important function), but a place where one develops as a human being - through intellectual stimulation, through the undergraduate community and through discovery.
The time has come for Malta's mollycoddled students to finally realise that.