The Education Ministry has confirmed that a White Paper regarding the enactment of a University of Malta Act is currently in the works.

A request for further information was sent, however none was received prior to the submission of this article.

University of Malta Rector Juanito Camilleri, responding to questions in relation to his upcoming sabbatical, included the following in his answer – “I understand that the government is considering reconstituting the university as a public-equivalent body and in so doing granting it administrative as well as academic autonomy.

“There has been talk about the prospect of periodic financing of the university through three- to five-year agreements, allowing the university to establish a service-provider to client relationship with the government while operating administratively at arm’s length. There is also the prospect of settling longstanding issues of possession, ownership and title over land and properties which should grant the university undisputed ownership of its estate, which it can then leverage to ensure its sustainability going forward. There needs to be formal endorsement and a commitment to finance the implementation of the university's Master Plan over the next decade.”

Discussing his sabbatical, Prof. Camilleri confirmed that “last January I applied to start a two-year sabbatical as from September 2016. Council acceded to my request. Therefore, by default, unless some other more exciting and compelling opportunity presents itself, I intend to resume my duties as a Professor at the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Business Incubation... but who knows what the future has in store? We live in a world of opportunity!

“Before one starts speculating who should be the next rector, it would be wise for us all to step back and ask: what type and calibre of university do we wish the University of Malta to become in the next decade or so?”

He believes that unless the university is suitably reconstituted, empowered and resourced, it cannot meet the onerous expectations being projected.

Last May, an official university spokesperson told this newsroom that the relationship between the government and the university should be a client/service-provider relationship in which the government periodically contracts the university to provide services based on a formula-funding mechanism that reflects the true cost-base of the services being provided. “Funding through annual subventions, that is totally detached from expected deliverables, is not conducive to long-term planning, or to attaining better ranking.

“There are other ideas, dependent on whether the government wishes to be more ‘radical’.” One such idea, the spokesperson had explained, was to allow the university to charge competitive fees for all its services, and in the case of tuition, instead of funding the university through subventions, “the government can issue scholarships to students to cover those fees”.

This would allow students to have the freedom to choose which university to attend, at the same time allowing the University of Malta to compete with the right level of funding and freedom to develop “without being shackled by the bureaucracy of the public sector”, the spokesperson had said