Health warning: The University rector is my boss and in a moment I will be comparing him to Darwin. But, first, a touch of the arts with an arpeggio on love and commitment.

In Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) and Bruce Wayne (Batman) are finally getting to know each other on a couch, next to a fireplace. With cautious honesty, since he’s really attracted to her, Wayne tries to explain he is not exactly normal. To which the eternally single girl replies that oh, she doesn’t mind psychos: “At least, they’re committed.”

Now, if you want my colourful interpretation of the University rector’s document (Vision 2020 Or Optical Illusion?) about the state of play at the University of Malta, here goes: The University requires nurture and love. There is no doubt the politicians are committed. But are they offering the right kind of commitment or is it “psychotic”? That is, based on a radical illusion about the University and their future life together?

Juanito Camilleri is offering this document for public discussion because he is nearing the end of his five-year mandate and it is a good time for stocktaking the significant investments and changes undertaken since 2006. The more important reason, however, is the University’s biographical trajectory: it has reached a crossroads as decisive to its destiny as that reached in 1769 (when the Collegium Melitense founded in 1592 became a university); 1969 (when the Tal-Qroqq campus was founded with the intention of providing free tuition for a newly independent, mobile society); and 1987 (when the strategy of 1969 were reinforced with a commitment to expand the number of graduates to European levels).

Almost all the world’s institutions that are 500 years old or more are universities. But the more advanced of these are in their third generation – the globalised institution taking the place of the mediaeval and industrial teaching and research institutions that preceded it. It is a fundamental transformation. Prof. Camilleri sees the last four years as having prepared for it. But there are important decisions, on which a national consensus is needed, to be taken now.

And now means now. The next couple of years, if that. The University has a set of projects that amount to about €175 million; the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology has presented a project set to cost circa €120 million. Once those investments are embarked on the current sites, the die will be cast for the next several decades.

Those sums show that financial commitment to higher education has not been lacking. Prof. Camilleri shows just how much the University has expanded over the last four years – on every measure from infrastructure to human resources to students. Projections suggest the University might have 17,000 students by 2020, with about 10 per cent being international students.

Meanwhile, the government and opposition continue to proclaim their commitment to invest further. The Opposition Leader has even broached the idea of a second university.

So, we are assured, the University will continue to reproduce itself. And Adam might even be given Eve.

If the rector expresses any restrained anxiety about this, you might think it is because he wants even more money committed or because he is afraid of competition. Actually, he is worried that an impossible sum of money is being promised and that the competition is being misidentified.

In Darwinian terms, the rector is arguing that merely trying to ensure that the University reproduces itself will kill it off as an effective institution involved in teaching and research, economy and society. In the current environment, simple reproduction is maladaptive. What is needed is evolution.

And evolution means, really, co-evolution: of the various higher education institutions (like Mcast and the Institute of Tourism Studies) together; of infrastructure, regulation and institutional culture and identities (or brands).

For effective co-evolution to happen, the entire field of higher education needs to be treated as an eco-system, operating within wider economic and social life. Prof. Camilleri recommends that all institutions have common facilities built in a “Knowledge City” (located, geographically, alongside the planned Sports Village).

This way, we would be displacing competition to where it should really be. Not in an artificial duopoly where Mcast and the UoM compete not just for the same students but also for the same limited financial resources, in a zero-sum game. But in the real market or, rather, markets: for students recruited regionally not just nationally; with foreign universities that are already targeting certain University departments.

Prof. Camilleri offers a scenario in which Maltese higher education can be truly world class; cost less (in the long run) than the current scenario where facilities are duplicated and where public-private partnerships can work effectively.

It seems both major political parties are not really interested in pursuing this scenario. Prof. Camilleri stops short of calling them creationists – having an institutional vision that is not historically deep enough, which ignores the fossil record of extinct educational experiments and which misidentifies the basis of reproductive fitness in today’s competitive environment.

But we can keep that in mind when considering their promises to see whether they are committing themselves to a dodo or a unicorn.

Note: Prof. Camilleri’s 2020 Vision Or Optical Illusion? can be accessed at www.um.edu.mt/newsoncampus/?a=111090.

ranierfsadni@europe.com