The announcement of the setting up of an American University in Malta brought the Italian word “bufala” to mind. The word “bufala”stands for an animal, similar to the buffalo whose milk is used for producing the genuine famous Italian mozzarella “di bufala”. Its second meaning is “deception or unfounded project”. This educational enterprise is turning out to be one. It is putting the good work done by the Minister of Education,EvaristBartolo, in jeopardy.He now risks being rememberednot for his substantive and structuraleducational reforms but for bringing over a scam university to Malta. It is now becoming clearer, that this is an exercise in land speculation.

As an academic at the University of Malta, I was at first happy that a foreign university was coming to Malta, setting up campus in the south of our beautiful island. I was happy because this would have brought healthy competition that would havepositively incentivizedour academic staff. More importantly, the South was getting a project that would help it, asit desperately needs and deserves alternative projects. 

However, when I started to read more about this project, I began to question why an AmericanUniversity was building a new campus in Malta. Malta offers a unique opportunity to set up a university city. Centuries of traditions and old buildings could have been turned into a wonderful open campus.

Both from an urban point of view and an academic perspective, it does not make sense to build a new university in a green area considering the lack of such areas for the population explosion on this small isle. Such an investment could have been directed to the development of a new university in one of our derelict urban cores. For example, such an investment could have been used to turn the Three Cities into a university town. This model has already been successfully adopted for Bologna and Pisa in Italy.There is enough government property in the Three Citiesthat could host a number of faculties.Government could have also opted for Fort Ricasoli. However, it seems that these investors are only after construction on virgin land.

The Government is facing another risk. This new University has chosen a name, which is similar, nearly identical, to that of our University. Even the acronym is very similar. The acronym of the University of Malta is UOM. The one of the American University is AUM. All American universities overseas normally start with AU. Only the last letter changes according to the city etc. However, thanks to a retired academic from the University of Malta, Mr Antoine Vella, now it has become clear that DePaul is notgoing to have anything to do with this university and definitely it will not be responsible for the Malta campus.

Unfortunately, the accrediting institution in Malta, headed by Mr. Martin Scicluna, does not put my mind at rest. I sincerely believe that this institution is not adequatelyequipped to vet and giveacademic accreditation to a university. I will not go into past episodes when they put pressure on our university to recognize non universitycourses as effective degrees.

I am sure that should the “DePaul Project”fail, these developers already have a back up plan.They will not only recover their money but 99.9%make a profit. I think we can all agree that we do not need foreign contractors to build flats in ourpristinegreen areas along the southern shore. We already have too many flats in other areas, which are ‘glorified’ ghettoes before becoming dens of iniquity.

But in this game, the biggest loser is the University of Malta and its graduates.After all the good work that the academics are doing to enhance the academic standards at our University, we will find that all our work has turned into dust because of some irresponsible and greedy concrete magnates. In simple words, our future,as a nation, isthe biggest loser.These types of universitiesare not really interested in promoting thinking and scholarship. They are only interested in the hard stash they can make for their own benefit. In this case, this is not going to come from idiotic courses but from land speculation. In the meantime, until this whole project collapses, they will seek to ride on the good name that our university is making in education. In the end, this will makelearning and knowledge through research an even more difficult task for those academics, who really wish to contribute to the advance of our nation.