Tearing into the University

Why does Labour keep attacking the University of Malta? Why does  Finance Minister Clyde Caruana keep picking on it?

Ostensibly, because it’s got an €11 million deficit. And Labour doesn’t tolerate deficits, doesn’t tolerate debt.

Imagine that – a national university with 12,500 students and 1,500 employees running 900 different courses, is responsible for producing the vast majority of the country’s professionals, is publicly harangued by the Finance Minister because it ran up a deficit of €11 million.

That’s a mere drop in the ocean compared to the government’s massive deficit and debt pile. Besides, most of that deficit accumulated after government agreed to raise salaries of university employees without coughing up the money to fund it.

Compare that €11 million to the €2 million spent on Mużika Mużika, a song festival.

Or the €4.5 million on the glitzy Malta Vision 2050. Or another €5 million on the Mediterranean Film Festival.

Clyde Caruana attempted to humiliate his own Alma mater, publicly stating that “I have had enough of the University making excuses”.

“We’ve been chasing them for years”, Caruana scoffed. “They should pull up their socks and roll up their sleeves and generate income”, he told a live audience.

Labour has practically kept the funding for the University of Malta static despite the increasing number of students, courses and salaries.

Labour is happily penny-pinching with our most important educational institution but it has no qualms dishing out millions to the American University of Malta and the Queen Mary University of London in Gozo.

Maltese taxpayers paid €7.2 million to fund the Gozo Barts project. Besides, we’ve also funded the €35 million construction of Barts Medical school in Gozo.

That campus was meant to be funded by private money raised by Vitals. But Vitals escaped without even having submitted plans for that campus. Steward, the real deal, was meant to build the campus at its own expense.

Steward Healthcare claimed to have spent €35 million constructing the Barts building outside Gozo General Hospital.

But the International Chamber of Commerce tribunal’s final opinion, which Robert Abela claimed as a victory for him and his government, emphatically decreed that it was actually the Maltese taxpayer who ended up paying for the campus.

Effectively, Labour handed over €42 million to Barts, a privately owned institution with a grand total of 295 students during the last academic year.

So, if a university with 295 students gets €42 million in taxpayers’ money, why shouldn’t a university with 12,500 students get an equivalent sum in government funding? And yet, Clyde Caruana keeps nit-picking over the University of Malta’s €11 million deficit.

He wants the University to pull up their socks and “generate income”.  Yet he made no such requests of the American University of Malta.

They ran up losses of over €11 million in just the first two years, and are currently being chased by creditors to repay hundreds of thousands of euros. And that’s with less than 150 students.

Yet Robert Abela’s government didn’t think twice before handing them tens of thousands of square metres of space at a prime waterfront site worth tens of millions of euro for a pittance.

Abela handed the AUM 31,500sqm of public land at Smart City for just 47 cents per square metre. Conservative estimates showed that the SmartCity land given to AUM was worth €63 million.

That’s on top of 10,800sqm at the historic Dock 1 in Cospicua, estimated to be worth €50 million.

Clyde Caruana’s Labour government practically handed over €113 million worth of public land and assets to the so-called American University of Malta which probably has less than 150 students on its books.

Labour promised that AUM would attract 4000 students, that it would create 750 jobs, and that it would revitalise the economy of the South. AUM was gifted enough land and infrastructure for a small-city campus and instead got no more than a tiny private college that’s deep in the red and has a terrible reputation.

In other words, the Labour government gave long-term control of scarce national assets at below market rates to a pseudo-university.

So, why is Labour so generous with the Jordanian Hani Salah and the British Queen Mary University of London, yet so stingy with our own university?

Why is Labour constantly attacking the University of Malta? Labour seems to be intent on damaging, undermining and humiliating the country’s university. To understand why, just look at any of the recent polls.

Amongst University graduates, Labour consistently trails far behind the Opposition. While Labour enjoys an insurmountable 64.6% support amongst those with primary education, it can only scrape 29% amongst those with a university degree.

Labour’s paranoia leads them to believe that the University of Malta is a culture medium of anti-Labour sentiment. The workers’ party is convinced that the University’s primary objective is to nurture opponents of its government.

They brandish Labour’s dismal poll ratings amongst university graduates as evidence that the University is brainwashing its students against Labour. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The role of the University is to help its students develop the faculties of critical thinking, rigorous data analysis skills, and the science of reaching logical conclusions based on the best evidence available.

If the acquisition of those skills in the majority of university graduates leads them to prefer alternatives to Labour, it’s hardly the university’s fault.

But that won’t stop Labour pursuing its longtime desire to punish the University. Labour has long had a chip on its shoulder when it comes to the University.

That ingrained resentment derived from a sense of inferiority manifests in the hostility that Labour has always shown towards the University of Malta. And that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.