Winding up the debate, Education Shadow Minister George Pullicino accused Minister Bartolo of having failed to answer the questions put forward by the Opposition leader, foremost of which was that the lack of consultation on the government’s part went against legislation.

Mr Bartolo had also deliberately missed pointing out that university licensing and study programmes needed to be very diverse.

He said that 60 per cent of the students that attend the universities mentioned by Mr Bartolo did so because of their high reputation and research facilities and not because of lowered academic standards.

Mr Pullicino emphatically denied the PN government had allowed institutions which did not have the students’ interests at heart to continue to operate.

The Nationalist government had appointed an Ombudsman for Students, set up the National Qualification Centre and the Commission for Higher Education.

It had also ensured that even kindergarten teachers obtained a degree before embarking on their teaching career.

He said the legal notice clearly showed “a government without a vision” because it had completely ignored all stakeholders and had turned the Commission for Higher Education into the government’s puppet.

“If the government had nothing to hide, it would have not published this legal notice by stealth,” he said.

The Malta Union of Teachers had said the legal notice gave a lot of weight to commercial potential to the detriment of academic standards.

Even university academics had stated that the publication of the legal notice lacked transparency and that the changed criteria would only change things for the worse.

Would the “Jordanian University of Żonqor” have been awarded a university licence had the government not published this legal notice?