The University of Malta’s student stipend system

Abstract

During the course of its 25 years in existence, the student- worker scheme encountered severe criticism because it introduced a numerus clausus, with entry being regulated by the condition of sponsorship; because it was based on a model of graduate manpower planning that was unresponsive to changes in the country’s small, open economy; and because it brought about a major shift in Malta’s traditional university culture, hitherto conservatively liberal in orientation.1 Despite such criticisms, however, subsequent governments of different ideological orientations found it impossible to dismantle a system that had provided financial independence to students. As a result, with the “refoundation” of the University of Malta in 1987 after the election of the center-right Nationalist Party, the student-worker sponsorship system was dropped and a stipend introduced for all students. Students were no longer required to find employer-sponsors, or to work—the argument being that studying itself was work. Constantly drawing on comparisons between high rates of university attendance in Europe and relatively low ones in Malta, the government justified the new stipend system in terms of its potential to attract young people to postsecondary studies.