The University of Malta bestows doctorates on people who are barely literate, and the Labour Party gives them senior positions – a double disgrace
Dr Luciano Busuttil BA LLD MP, Labour spokesman for European Affairs, in his own words (and I give you my word that I haven’t touched so much as a comma):
Hon. Luciano Busuttil
I am 35 yrs old, married to Dorothy, have 2 kids Gabriel 3 yr old and Kayleigh 4 months. I am a lawyer since 1999 practicing in Maltese Courts of Law and Tribunals. My political career started in 1997 first as a journalist and a TV anchor man for One News till 2000 when I also presented different news related programmes. During this period I was an active member of the National Executive of the Forum Zghazagh Laburisti (Labour Youth Forum). In 2001 I got elected as Mayor for Hamrun. I got re-elected two more times in 2004 and in 2007. Did not make it to Parliament in 2003 but succeeded in being elected in 2008. I was appointed as spokesman for EU affairs and foreign affairs and MEUSAC for PL. Personal interests in movies and reading and music and astronomy and watching (I stress the word watching) sports. I was also President of the PL Local Councilors Section from 2002 to 2008. Now I am a Member of the Standing Committee for Foreign and European Affairs and also the working group of EU documents scrutiny.
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We have long since given up on the Labour Party and the way it collects rubbish in its ever-widening skip. But I think it’s time for the University of Malta to conduct a serious appraisal of the manner and method in which it bestows its degrees.
The evidence is increasing, with every passing year, that not even the ability to write simple sentences in English is a requirement any longer – when, at doctoral level, the ability to write and speak fluently in English should be a given.
Dr Luciano Busuttil BA LLD MP’s use of English here indicates that his Maltese is just as bad. In my experience, when people write like this it’s because they are thinking in poor Maltese to start with. Grammar and punctuation are grammar and punctuation, whatever the language.
There are so many errors of grammar, syntax, spelling, use of capital letters, punctuation and idiom that I don’t even know where to begin.
It is tragic that a man with access to free education in a country where English is widely used and extensively available in the form of newspapers, books, films, television and magazines, should have reached middle age without being able to write even the simplest sentences.
The greater tragedy, of course, is that the University of Malta bestowed a doctorate on him, the same doctorate it bestows on those who truly merit it.
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So if Nakita cannot hack it into university she must be even worse .
Should we laugh, weep or screech? I’m going for the latter, using my nick. Pity we don’t have avatars here.
“The greater tragedy, of course, is that the University of Malta bestowed a doctorate on him, the same doctorate it bestows on those who truly merit it”:
Be careful, D. You might indirectly be endorsing Muscat’s proposal of having two universities.
As a point of fact – I want to be completely honest – I think that proposal should have already been carried out by the PN which offered some land in Gozo to a foreign university which wanted to set up a campus here.
For some strange reason, the PN did not take that initiative to its fruition. Why? This idea would be just – for the very reason underlying your argument, namely that idiots and bright chaps are given the same degree by the same university.
Think about it: a first class honours degree and a third class honours degree from the same university do not have the same implication as a third class honours from a top-rated university and a first class honours from a red brick university…
I really think Malta can do with a second (red brick) university for the likes of Dr B Dip. Nail Technician, and many others I can think of. Apart from the IQ consideration, other countries have more than one university per 400,000 inhabitants.
The University of Malta is forever short of funds and we want to open a second university.
Unless this one will start charging tuition fees, in which case it’ll be torches and pitchforks.
Why look for an expensive, complicated, unworkable solution when the best solution is right under our noses? Just raise standards, starting from O Levels and earlier.
If undergraduates cannot speak and write English, then somewhere down the line the system let them through when it was meant to filter them out.
The weakest link in the system is teachers who do not know how to speak, write or teach.
Luciano, The Coin Operated Boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnyYTjjhJ0
Was his doctorate served with fries?
I met some of the dumbest persons I know through university. These people now possess degrees and warrants allowing them to teach in our schools and manage nationwide educational policies.
LL.D. is not really a doctorate. It is just a long, long BA course in which students have to learn laws and procedures by heart.
It is one of the ‘founding’ courses at university, it takes five years and so it is called ‘doctor of laws’.
But it’s a strange doctorate in which you specialise by reading for a master’s degree – after the LLD.
A real doctorate is a D.Phil. or Ph.D. or the newer ‘professional doctorates’ like EdD, DBA etc.
The entry requirement would usually be an MA or MSc.
Even for a first degree, a good command of the languages you will need to use for study or work in public life is essential.
It’s even simpler than that. English is our second official language. Enough said. We can either get our act together or stop deluding ourselves and change that bit of the constitution.
….and having said all this without Maltese, students are not allowed into university irrespective of the degree they are pursuing.
The emphasis on the Maltese language has diluted our command of the English language to the extent that we have reduced our acaedmic status to pidgin English even at dissertation levels.
But as long as we have interpretors in Europe who translate political English into Maltese and as long as Maltese is an official EU langage when we could have allowed English our second language to remain at the surface, ferhanin.
I wonder whether he is even good at changing diapers. Or perhaps he thinks that it’s his wife’s job.
Not surprising. University of Malta is ranked 1633 in ‘Webometrics Ranking of Colleges and Universities’.
The University of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, is ranked in the 401 to 450 cohort. However, our university is ranked number one in Malta. Have begun searching for its ranking in high schools.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110822/local/Labour-remembers-Lord-Strickland.381250
Not related to this article, but I was surprised you had not picked up on this ‘news’ item.
[Daphne – I did. http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=130814 ]
Seems quite clear that Labour regularly read your articles and comments and in a weird manner actually act on them.
Immediately after the divorce referendum you had provided a well informed (as usual) account of the history of Sliema residents’ political beliefs and how they turned to the Nationalist Party when the Strickland Party ceased to exist.
Well now it seems that Joseph Muscat feels he can try to bring those ex Strickland supporters into the Labour fold as well.
Yes you’re right. Just like John Dalli, I wasn’t following “all” the news, unlike him I wasn’t on holiday in Gozo, I was working, earning my living and this article was unfortunately missed. Well written.
Apparently, in Sweden, if your English is not up to scratch (and they don’t bother with exams but with practical tests to see how fluent you are) you MUST take a course in English at university along with your chosen subject.
Another thing, isn’t A level English a pre-requisite for the law course? That essay wouldn’t get you a D at O level.
The sad thing, David, is that the essay would probably get you an A.
Not even A-level, intermediate English is enough, and it’s an incredibly easy one.
Two years ago I attended a conference in Copenhagen.
The vast majority of delegates, about 5000, came from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
To facilitate matters all the proceedings were in English.
The standard of English across the board, from speakers to posters, put most Maltese (not to mention British) university graduates to shame.
Daphne, I sat through years at our university wanting to jam needles in my ears for the alternative was much worse…sitting through hours upon hours of lectures delivered in mangled English.
I consider the educational system as one the key causes of the ignorance and inefficiency we see in Malta – and it goes way beyond writing skills.
I remember covering only Maltese history at both primary and secondary school and my only memory of the geography we did in class is something about limestone.
I hear it has changed a little since then, but unfortunately, many Maltese, at least of my generation, are very often incapable of having a conversation about anything other than their personal lives, that’s unless they were brought up in a home where their parents exposed them to something more than what their neighbours were up to four doors down.
Another problem is that many university students in Malta do not have to strive for their education.
Unlike students in many other countries, in Malta, university students are paid to go to university and do not have to move out of their parents’ home to be closer to campus.
I understand that for Malta to have an educated workforce students need to be encouraged to further their education, but somewhere the system is not working as it should.
Malta certainly has many people with degrees but take these people out of university and you soon notice they have little more than academic intelligence, if that.
They leave university in their mid-20s, and even later, without having experienced certain essentials.
In other countries, university is seen as a place where students learn a lot more than how to pass a test.
This, combined with the ease at which you can obtain a university degree in Malta, means that the value of these degrees is being lost and we’re left with people with a degree, even three or four, who lack every day, practical intelligence and who sometimes know very little about what is happening outside of their family unit and social circle.
August 27, 2011. Great. I’m not sure if anything has changed since the publication of this article but I am inclined to agree with most of the comments.
I am from a post-war, third world country and it stands to reason that the quality of education offered in our schools (especially tertiary institutions) should be far from perfect.
I refuse to take this as an excuse because the foundation of a civilized society is largely derived from the content of the characters of its citizens-those who come from the walls of the very schools we’re talking about.
Whatever the case, there is a non-avoidable tendency for students to leave universities half-baked or not baked at all. Some leave worst than they entered.
I am currently prospecting for a graduate degree in Malta. The program is a collaborative degree program between the University of Malta and the San Diego State University in California.
I’m not sure how this initiative worked out between the two universities but I think if the above article is anything to go by, something has to be done. I paid for my college education here in Liberia and to know that Maltese are paid to go to school is just interesting.