Education lifts you up – at UM you rise much higher
Onorevoli Ministru Dr Clifton Grima, onorevoli sur Justin Schembri, shadow minister għall-edukazzjoni, Segretarju Permanenti Sur Matthew Vella, kollegi, uffiċjali tal-KSU, studenti u speċjalment intom il-freshers tal-2023, merħba. Erġajna ltqajna biex nagħtu bidu għal sena akkademika oħra f’din l-Università venerabbli li tgħodd iktar minn erba’ mitt sena fil-forom differenti tagħha. Istituzzjoni li dejjem kellha sehem importanti fil-formazzjoni ta’ din l-art ħelwa. Ġie li staqsejt, f’okkażjonijiet oħra, u nerġgħa nistaqsi hawnhekk: kif kienet tevolvi kulturalment, soċjalment u ekonomikament, din artna li kieku ma kinitx preżenti għal ħafna snin fiha l-Università ta’ Malta?
Għandna jistudjaw magħna ħafna studenti internazzjonali: madwar student minn tminja ġew fl-Università ta’ Malta minn pajjiżi oħra biex jikbru magħkom fl-għerf u l-maturita’ akkademika. Se nkompli bl-Ingliż biex jifhmuni huma wkoll.
Good morning and welcome dear international students: this year, you will join our student body of about 12 400+. New students who joined UM this year number 4900 following over 945 programmes of studies on offer. I have no doubt that all of you will have the experience of a lifetime which will likely be the best investment in yourselves that you’ll ever make in terms of real return.
My main message this year is meant to reassure all our freshers, both local and international, that the road you’ve chosen to study with us is the best decision you’ve made. And it is one that will certainly (not perhaps) change for the better the quality of your life going forward.
Education is a powerful tool and, like a universal compass, it helps one to navigate their lives intelligently and most fruitfully. Higher education is perhaps the most precious and forms the backbone of all technologically advanced societies today. Education liberates the mind of bigotry and fanaticism and from such prejudices as racism, religious and sexual intolerance and other forms of ignorance which enslave the uneducated person. Uneducated masses are easier to control and manipulate and that is why despotic regimes despise and fear education, especially higher education, and do their best to deny it to their citizenry. As you know, it is unfortunately girls and women who bear the brunt of such affrontery. Witness the shameful situation in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Let me now tell you why, if you’re studying in Malta, L-Università ta’ Malta is the best place to be.
It is the University with the most experience and the longest history providing education and training to students at this level. Its full-time resident academics (from lecturers to professors, numbering 730+) all hold PhD degrees as this is a requirement for UM staff: it is not so for other higher education providers (HEIs).
UM is today a research-engaged university employing over 400 research support officers who assist resident academics in their research work. This is the place in Malta where top research happens in terms of quantity and quality and you won’t find anywhere else on the Islands which comes even close to this. Moreover, several of our academics work together with industrial partners when the research demands it. The research done at UM is also being converted into commercial products and services and significant business ventures have been spawned as a result of this work.
UM is today ranked with the best 800 universities in the world: this means that it is in the top 3% and this thanks to its teaching standards, the commitment to students of its staff and the research achievements. We have just been ranked by QS Europe in the 344th position among European universities and this is indeed a prestigious placing.
We have one of the best (i.e. very low) student-to-staff ratios of European universities so that means that our students get the extra attention they may need to acquire the learning outcomes demanded of their course. Our graduates are easily employable and national statistics show that UM graduates are employed within a few months of completing their education: indeed we hold the absolute record in this respect. Actually, many students are already in part-time employment even before they graduate. I suggest that working to a modest timetable which doesn’t interfere with the on-campus experience and self-study can enhance the student’s lifeskills including through better time management and acquisition of important social skills through interaction with others, besides of course providing the financial benefit.
All the above and other reasons argue for top place for L-Università ta’ Malta in the higher education space on these Islands and accounts for the fact that 4 out of every 5 students who are awarded the MATSEC certificate choose UM to study. It also explains why international students increasingly seek to come to UM for both bachelor and postgraduate degrees and their number increases year on year. One in every 7 students following a full degree at UM is an international student; this number excludes the 650+ students who come to study with us for one or two semesters on the Erasmus or other similar exchange programmes.
So having hopefully convinced you that UM is the premier higher education provider in Malta, I now ask you freshers why you’ve decided to study for a degree? Indeed, what are university degrees for? What are they supposed to deliver? Universities were invented about 1000 years ago: why are they still here dispensing diplomas and degrees? Why do governments spend so much money supporting the delivery of higher education? Here, one needs to keep in mind that the economic sector and the job market are temporarily deprived of thousands of potential productive workers who could be toiling away and raising the Gross Domestic Product in offices, factories and other places of work while, instead, these youths spend 3, 4 or even more years in higher education: what is the advantage to society of this apparent sacrifice?
Research confirms that students go into higher education (and pay heavily for the service in most countries where tertiary education is not free) because they and their parents consider a degree to significantly improve the prospects for employment in a good career of the graduate. This expectation is founded on fact: unemployment is indeed lowest among graduates than other lower-educated categories (1). And this finding has been consistently so independently of the ups and downs experienced at different times by various economies across the globe. Moreover, conscious of the need to deliver readily-usable tertiary education, universities are continually tweaking their course contents to make them more appealing to students and their eventual employers. Big data analytics and labour market information will increasingly be used for this aim. And quality assurance agencies everywhere have made a mantra nudging universities towards aligning their educational products to the job market.
If we look at the number of graduating students from bachelor to doctoral level, which at UM number around 3500 annually, only about 47% of them would have followed professional subjects such as medicine, nursing and other health sciences, accountancy, law, education, engineering etc. The rest would have graduated with degrees in the liberal arts, the social sciences and the humanities: in other words, degrees that are principally aimed at improving the quality of the human person rather than providing deep and thorough preparation for some skilled profession or job description. Mind you, these “non-professional” degrees are still extremely important from the job prospects point of view because they empower the graduate with generic skills and competences that are useful and readily transferable to most any work environment or occupation. Indeed this is the reason why university graduates holding any type of degree are more readily employed than persons with lower education.
Interestingly, in the not-so-distant past, degrees were not deemed essential for certain professional callings: e.g. teachers, nurses, social workers, managers and others. So the interest in requiring university degrees as preparation for several professions is a relatively recent development. Why is this? What’s so special about a university education as preparation for work? And indeed as preparation for life.
About 20 years ago, a group of European academics discussed this matter and came up with a description of what a good and valid university degree should deliver to students. A bachelor’s degree should provide the following learning outcomes in five principal domains, thus:
These general deliverables are referred to as the “Dublin descriptors” and today remain part of the canons of the European higher education qualification framework. A similar set of descriptors exists for master's and doctoral degrees. (2)
Notice that the first descriptor requires the bachelor's degree to build on knowledge and understanding acquired during general and upper secondary education: this is why to be accepted to study at any serious university, you will generally need to demonstrate that you have achieved a minimum level of education evidenced by so-called “entry requirements”. In our case, the entry requirements are passes in SEC English, Maltese and Math and possession of the Matriculation (MATSEC) Certificate and, for certain courses, required minimum grades in specific subjects. This baseline academic achievement allows the University to help build you up to a bachelor's degree level standard in a serious and credible way given the limited time you have to study and also tending to your social life.
Last year, Senate agreed to relax the entry requirements slightly and we thus allowed 105 additional students into the fresher year on a probationary basis. This number represented 4% of the fresher population but they were 105 individuals with souls and personalities who had aspirations and hopes similar to those of the other 96% of the regular students. We felt that the risk that the probationary students would fail in their first-year studies was not too excessive so that passing successfully to the second year would automatically remove their probationary status (which carried restrictions not applicable to the others) when they could then continue on as regular students. I am happy to report that 100 of these students have managed to progress to the second year and this result fills us with great joy. If this excellent success rate is maintained going forward, Senate will be asked to consider embedding the Probationary Clause permanently in our regulations because we want to help educate as many students as possible.
Needless to say, working on your degree is serious work and we recognise that it is not always easy to keep up with the commitment. We are constantly striving to make our degree programmes as student-centred as possible which is why we frequently tweak our course regulations to ensure that students get the necessary support to master the learning outcomes for each study unit as declared in the course prospectus. It is important that you read and check carefully what the learning outcomes for each study unit you’re following are: it is against these learning outcomes that you will be assessed. If a student fails an examination, they are entitled to be given detailed feedback by the tutor describing the reasons for not making the grade. Do exercise this right. It will help you perform better in your resit session and, equally importantly, it will help you learn. Recognise that assessment, be it in proctored, written closed-book examinations, take-home assignments, or a practical or oral format, is intended to help your learning process and is not an end in and of itself.
It is interesting to point out that both the fourth and fifth Dublin descriptors (respectively, communication and learning skills) for a bachelor's degree read practically the same for master's and doctoral degrees. In other words, whether you’re studying for a first degree or a research doctorate, you are expected to have mastered the ability to communicate in speech and in writing both with the scholarly community as well as society in general about your area of expertise. I suggest that a degree is almost worthless if it avoids imparting this basic ingredient to your education.
I am saying this to remind you that the communication skills acquired at school are not sufficient for a graduate and need to be improved upon. This is why we expect you all to attend regularly and diligently classes in the Communication and Academic Skills Programme (CASP) designed to help you grow and refine these essential skills without which your very credibility as a graduate could be called into question. A competent university graduate has to be able to articulate well their case and argue their way in writing or vocally generally and especially during presentations using the right conventions. A bungling graduate trying to explain what they may know but can’t voice is a tragic situation. The absence of the learning outcome enshrined in the fourth Dublin descriptor is a litmus test for the validity of a university degree and no graduate (bachelor, master or doctor) can afford to fail this test.
And while on the subject of communication, I cannot avoid mentioning the recent arrival on the scene of generative AI and its effects on higher education. Students who can’t or are reluctant to write tend to plagiarise and online resources, and now, ChatGPT has just made that that much easier.
Or has it? Is use of ChatGPT for the writing of essays cheating? Not everybody agrees on this one. For example, in a recent article in University World News, Eaton (3) maintained that using AI-generated text, one cannot, technically speaking, be accused of plagiarism. Historically, plagiarism is when one human uses text (or ideas) written (or originated) by another human without giving the person any credit; AI technology harvests and rearranges information gleaned from a huge volume and variety of online sources and the produced text can actually be new and arguably “original” (and, by the way, sometimes totally false). So, is it plagiarism? Not only is the text generated by the AI-tool not the student’s creation, but also the human sources used by the tool to synthesize the text often remain unacknowledged. So unless the student actually declares that they have used the tool, perhaps to generate a first draft which is then refined, modified and added to by the student, and the sources used identified and acknowledged, the act of using the tool in stealth would, to my mind, constitute academic fraud even beyond plagiarism. If the safeguards mentioned are in place, the product could perhaps be acceptable to some tutors (but probably not others) as a hybrid human-technology co-creation.
Clearly, one way to avoid students cheating in take-home assignments and open book exams through use of AI tools such as ChatGPT or Bard or any one of about 30 similar tools on the market is for examiners to sidestep memorisation-based essays and instead use project-based items that require application of knowledge, rather than its regurgitation or repetition in the student’s (or the AI’s) own words. Project-based assignments allow students to show their critical and creative thinking skills and to apply these skills to real world situations.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, AI tools are not going to disappear and they will increasingly influence the way we teach and the way students learn. AI tools will also affect, positively I am sure, the work our students will be doing once they are in employment. At the moment, universities worldwide are discussing how best to deal with these tools and our Senate will shortly be considering proposals which a specialist group has developed during the last few months. No doubt, as educators, we will all have to go through a learning curve so as to be able to deal effectively and intelligently with this powerful and disruptive technology. AI technology promises to improve things for society by facilitating work and improving technological control over objects and operations. But its misuse is already offering and will continue to present serious challenges which can harm society and which are extremely preoccupying. I suggest that the best protection against the risks will be afforded by a sound general educational grounding.
Dear freshers, may your total experience at L-Università ta’ Malta take you further and higher than your own expectations. The best of luck on your studies.
References
(1) OECD (2022): Education at a glance interim report: update of employment and educational attainment indicators. http://www.oecd.org/education/eag-interim-report.htm. Accessed September 2023
(2) See, for example, https://beleidswiki.fhict.nl/doku.php?id=en:beleid:dublin_descriptoren# Accessed September 2023.
(3) Eaton, S.E. Artificial intelligence and academic integrity, post-plagiarism, University World News, 4 March 2023, https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20230222130606612