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The UMASA Council notes with alarm the recent internal communication by the University curtailing the employment of part-time lecturers for elective study-units. We understand and share the serious concern expressed by the student group SDM, on the detrimental effects to course quality of this impending new UM policy.
It is a major part of the responsibility and mission of the University to provide courses that are up to the highest standards, not only in the quality of content and delivery, but also in coverage of and access to all the key topical elements pertaining to the field of every course. Some of these elements are offered as electives, i.e. a set of study-units of which the students are required to choose only a subset, according to their varied interests and strengths. The availability of these electives serves not only to make a course more attractive and satisfying for the students, but also crucially it ensures that all the key elements of expertise are provided to the country, even if some of them reside in different members of the profession or field. These electives are therefore very important markers of course quality and completeness.
While most often these electives can be taught by the resident academic staff of the University, there are also many cases where this may not be possible, for reasons such as staff loading, pre-approved or unavoidable staff absences, or the highly specialized nature of a topic (that might, for example , require tengagement of a highly skilled external practitioner to teach it). Over the years, UM departments have expertly cultivated and balanced a teeming symbiosis of full-time and part-time Resident academic staff, as well as part-time Visiting and Casual lecturers, to cover the various elements and aspects of our academic courses, including the electives, providing a standard that has given our University the high reputation and ranking that it holds. The new blanket policy will seriously disrupt one of the key elements of this symbiosis.
UMASA reiterates the call that it made to the Government last October, to recognise the immense value that UM brings to Maltese society, and to give it the appropriate funding that it requires to continue to operate effectively. We expect the Government to appreciate that the operating costs of the University have not been spared the impact of inflation, that has affected almost everything (both locally and globally) dramatically in recent years. In addition, the recent growth of the University, as reflected for example in the inauguration of new buildings and state-or-the-art laboratories of which we are so proud as a nation, inevitably create substantial new recurrent overhead costs that must be met. The funding levels of ten, or even of five, years ago are therefore no longer sufficient to keep the University healthy, and there is an urgent necessity for these to be increased substantially. It is an unacceptable shame that the University is being systematically brought to its knees in this manner.
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