Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/18494
Title: Problems in equalizing access to higher education : policy lessons from Malta
Authors: Sultana, Ronald G.
Keywords: Education, Higher -- Malta
Education, Higher -- Malta -- Evaluation
Education -- Malta -- History
Education and state -- Malta
Issue Date: 1995
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Citation: Sultana, R. G. (1995). Problems in equalizing access to higher education : policy lessons from Malta. Higher Education Policy, 8(3), 51.
Abstract: Malta is unique in Europe in that its post-compulsory education institutions, including university, provide flot only free education, but also a stipend to all students irrespective of the latter's social background. The value of the stipends increases from year to year, so that mid-way through a uni- versity course, a student receives close to a quarter of a lecturer's salary. Introduced by a Labour government sixteen years ago, the stipend system forms part of a package of education reforms intended to ensure greater retention in education at the post-compulsory (16+) level. It has been maintained, in a modified form, despite changes in political leadership and the quadrupling of student intake at the University since 1987. This paper provides a back- ground on these reforms and compares them with strategies to democratize educational access adopted across Europe. It reports a number of quantitative studies carried out between 1982 and 1994 in order to ascertain the social composition of students at the University of Malta. The paper concludes by engaging sociological theories which purport to explain differential access to education and argues that neither 'cultural dispossession' nor 'structural exclusion' models suffice to account for the patterns that are evident in the Malta case.
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/18494
Appears in Collections:Scholarly Works - CenEMER
Scholarly Works - FacEduES

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