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Michaela Muscat
Life for the university fresher class of 2005 “will be at least 50 per cent more expensive” than for their counterparts in 1998, students council (KSU) president Anthony Camilleri says.
It’s 1997 all over again, yet without the students taking to the streets. Education Minister Louis Galea has finally pushed through the first phase of stipend cuts for university, over a year after a well-polished strategy of long and tedious consultations.
‘The stipend scheme: the government chooses to invest in youths’ is new government-speak for the reform which cuts stipends to Lm40 a month, a tenner less than Labour’s Lm50 flat rate.
But unlike the outrage which met Labour’s cuts back in 1997, the atmosphere at Tal-Qroqq is indeed sedate. It’s also the end of a Nationalist honeymoon, when following re-election in 1998, Galea upgraded stipends to Lm60 monthly, adding a yearly Lm200 book grant, and a one-off Lm400 gift for electronics and other ‘related’ student material.
The KSU was one of the bodies involved in the consultations. Starting back in 2003, they were led by none other than the Prime Minister’s own son, Paul Gonzi, then KSU president, along with treasurer Alan Arrigo, the son of Nationalist MP Robert Arrigo.
As expected, the mood today is no longer angry: “we are extremely happy that there are no loans, fees or means-testing,” Anthony Camilleri says, referring to the original plan pioneered by Labour.
There is no coyness about the historical Nationalist presence in the KSU. Echoing their viewpoint are traditional allies SDM, the Christian-democrat students: staunchly pro-Nationalist, it has served as launching pad for future Nationalist MPs: “we are happy government heeded our recommendations and did not introduce loans or means-testing,” their president David Herrera says.
Certainly not everyone shares their outlook, and that does not only include the social-democrat organisation Pulse, equally associated with the Labour student organ, and a traditional opponent on campus.
Mark Sciriha, the editor of student paper The Insiter claims the consultation process could have been more credible if the KSU had a broader student representation – the election of SDM members and students from the Nationalist youth organ MZPN to the students’ council has now become a frequent occurrence. It says little about the political make-up of Malta’s university students – only circa a hundred students out of thousands actually vote in the annual elections.
Anthony Camilleri disagrees with the results of the reform: “they are a partial success. Although the decisions usually taken by Gonzi’s government are final KSU were the only constituted body to change the final decision.”
Camilleri claims the present results are far removed from the initial proposal to have a total loan scheme, having spent a whole year in discussion with the government team who headed the reform.
But the effects of the cuts are admitted by all across the student bodies. KSU complain that since the last stipend reform in 1998, “standard inflation has topped 15 per cent, and an 18 per cent VAT on books was introduced.”
Pulse agree: “unlike workers, students have not had their stipends adjusted to the rising cost of living.” Freshmen today will receive Lm380 less a year.
Education Minister Louis Galea displays a natural confidence: “stipends facilitate access by addressing affordability and liquidity constraints of different students in different courses. It tries to change the graduate mix through special grants which act as a long-term signal for those courses where government through its research is aware of great scope and potential for these skills.”
Former education minister Evarist Bartolo accuses Galea of promoting a “culture of dependency… what was wrong in 1997 has become right in 2005.”
Still a believer in the partial bank loan scheme launched in 1997 which students could repay after landing a job following graduation, Bartolo claims the new cuts will make it much more difficult for families to help their sons and daughters get a university education.
But nearly a decade after expressing outrage at Bartolo’s own cuts, Galea says “it would be a huge mistake to motivate our children into further education solely with a stipend mechanism.”
Galea says stipend cuts will not lead to a decline in the number of university students: “how would one explain the much higher participation rates in countries where students pay university fees and do not receive any financial support? Countries promoting much heavier private investment in higher education have achieved much higher participation rates than Malta… students do not attend university because of stipends.”
In reality, the new stipend reform is a Nationalist success, crowning its strategy of long drawn-out and wide consultations, instead of taking hasty decisions – Labour’s crucial mistake back in the day of the ‘financial hole’.
Even the normally compliant KSU demonstrate their annoyance at the minister: “it is important to consider today’s announcement in light of past political promises that stipends would remain untouched,” Anthony Camilleri says.
Instead of leading their cohort into the streets, KSU will be holding polls to find out “what the students really want. After all we don’t want to risk losing what we gained by taking to the streets, as experience has shown us that sitting around a table achieves better results than protesting.”
There will be more thick reports to be drafted and presented at conferences, more polling and more discussions for the KSU.
mmuscat@mediatoday.com.mt
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