Education Minister Evarist Bartolo yesterday pledged repeatedly that nobody would be buying any licences to set up any university in Malta, as the Opposition had been claiming in its criticism of Legal Notice 150 on changes in higher education.
Replying to Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil’s critique of the legal notice, he said talks were currently in progress with a financial institution that was interested in opening up an agency in Malta. The talks centred on training financial experts in conjunction with the University of Malta.
Mr Bartolo said the traditional higher-education models of 2012 were out of date. Those models would have a university only called such if it trained students in at least six sectors, including arts and humanities, life sciences, physical sciences and engineering. Today there were several universities and institutions of higher education with fewer sectors but greater focus on the sectors in which they trained students.
The institute that enjoyed the greatest reputation in the world, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did not excel in the other sectors, but did that mean that if it wanted to set up in Malta it should not be allowed?
The only sector where Malta was bringing in revenue was the Medical School
The government wanted success for tertiary education. Malta needed to have a good, hard-working regulator to compete against enormous giants attracting foreign students. Massive changes were under way in higher education all over the world. The current landscape was unrecognisable. One very important hurdle was the issuing of visas, which had to be very rigorous to make sure that whoever was coming to “to study” did not have other intentions. The sector was very competitive even on speed of issue.
Ways must be found to help the University of Malta, the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology and the Institute of Tourism Studies, as well as other local operators, benefit from the internationalisation of studies.
One of the greatest stumbling blocks for the university was that it was bound by EU rules not to charge tuition fees to European students. The only sector where Malta was bringing in revenue was the Medical School, with students from the Gulf states.
Malta must understand why steps were needed to change the higher education sector, including capitalising on the enormous market of students overseas.
The minister insisted that the changes in the legal notice had nothing to do with setting up the of , nor indeed with any investor. Malta must be in there with changes to the landscape.
Another interesting development was trans-national education, where institutions from different countries partnered each other. The University of Malta already had arrangements with five others, even on joint degrees, and could yet grow in this direction. But it would not be enough to attract foreign students – lectures intended for Maltese students would have to change for the different cultures of foreign students.
It was gratifying to know that there was only one Master’s degree in Trade Finance available in the world, and that was in Malta, set up by an international bank with the university. Malta’s was the only one outside the UK recognised by the UK Medical Council. The International Maritime Law Institute had a very good reputation, as did the Diplomacy Academy.
Mr Bartolo said he had been very happy about the partnership between the Royal University of Malta and the Shanghai Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Malta could also attract international students, whose tuition fees had been trebled in UK. The biggest arm of quality assurance would be a TripAdvisor-like recount of students’ own experiences in Malta.
It was quality of tuition, not numbers of programmes offered, that made for a successful university. The legal notice raised standards, insisted on lecturer quality and introduced licensing even for tuition centres, Mr Bartolo said.