Slavish support for local MP got me a job. Did the pencil-pushing suckers at Tal-Qroqq get the memo?

The Skinny | No 154 – We Don’t Need No Education, Apparently

What are we skinning? The continued degradation of Malta’s intellectual life.

Why are we skinning it? Because the announcement that the University of Malta will be getting a €1.1 million budget cut makes it pretty apparent where the country’s priorities lie.

The University isn’t special though. Neither was the Malta Film Awards ceremony, and look how much that cost.

But we famously – or rather, infamously – have no idea how much that cost, exactly. Yes, its calculation seems to be beyond the capabilities of the Ministry for Tourism and its many employees.

Maybe they all missed a crucial university credit back in the day? Possibly, though I don’t remember university budget cuts making the headlines during my time.

You’d have to go pretty far back for it to have an impact on the current crop of politicians and their cronies. Do you though? The post-Muscat crop is largely made up of barely-fetal candidates.

Oh yeah, and the man of the hour for the Film Awards story was in fact one of their number. Yep. Along with the likes of economy minister Silvio Schembri...

Maybe it’s just the nostalgia of skiving classes that led to the cuts. Indeed – the best way to prevent students from skiving is to cut down on courses for them to skive away from.

So it could be that it’s the opposite. That we’re dealing with actual geniuses here. True. There’s the university of life, then there’s the university of inter-dimensional galaxy brains, where our main boys and gals appear to operate.

If only they’d transfer those crumbs of wisdom and dynamic super-intelligence to the general populace. Hard to disagree with you there after we’ve had to endure listening to what feels like an entire village defending an alleged fraudster instead of getting angry with him for effectively embezzling them out of their cash.

Aren’t the Maltese supposed to be angry as hell, though? Statistically, yeah. But they seem to vent most of that rage on low-income foreigners, so that solves it.

If only those eggheads at Tal-Qroqq could help us make sense of all of this. They would, but the budget is unlikely to cover it. So we’ll just have to settle for another stretch of xenophobic alienation, it seems.

Do say: “Budget cuts across the board are to be expected considering the double-whammy of COVID recovery and global inflation, but such a sizeable slash to the country’s leading educational institution communicates quite the message.”

Don’t say: “The university of life has served us well so far. Rewarded with a government job for my slavish support of a local MP and living my best life. That’s most of us anyway. Those hard-grinding, pencil-pushing suckers at Tal-Qroqq don’t seem to have gotten the memo.”