It’s not how they get in, but how they get out
This was my column in The Malta Independent yesterday.
I think Franco Debono needs to be reminded that the University of Malta is an autonomous institution and this means that politicians should stay out of the matter of how it is run.
Yes, members of parliament can and should voice their concern about certain aspects of its running and call for greater scrutiny or improvements – but certainly, they cannot dictate and they are wrong to believe, as Debono appears to believe, that they have some special right to be obeyed on the matter of what university entry requirements should and shouldn’t be.
Debono has said that entry requirements for the law course should be made more stringent so as to “protect the prestige of the law course”.
Let’s leave aside the matter of why university entrance requirements should never be a politician’s business. A look back at past meddling and control should serve as a graphic illustration of why this is a very bad idea. Let’s concentrate instead on why Franco Debono’s reasoning is faulty and illogical.
The problem with the law course, and this has been my beef for years, is not the entry requirements but the non-existent weeding-out process which allows people to graduate who should never even have made it beyond the first-year examinations.
I notice that Debono has nothing to say about the total absence of an ongoing weeding-out process. Perhaps this is because the so-far unconfirmed rumours are true that he failed more than a few examinations himself, and that his final thesis was nearly marked down for failure and only made it through because of the (misplaced) sympathy of one or two examiners, who suggested to him how it might be rescued.
Gate-keeping through entry requirements is just a way of ensuring that the process of sieving out the weaker students, on an ongoing basis throughout the six years, does not become more cumbersome than necessary. If you get rid of as much incompetence as you can at the outset, there is less to be got rid of as you go along. Gate-keeping is not a replacement for the weeding-out process.
In other words, you weed out the more obviously weak ones before allowing them to get in, but then you must carry on weeding out weak ones throughout the six years. But with the University of Malta law course, this is not happening. Once people are allowed in, they are pretty much reassured of graduating and even of a warrant to practise at the end of it all.
That’s why we end up with lawyers for whom logical thought is an alien concept, and who are barely literate. I saw a lawyer’s letter the other day which contained at least 10 errors of grammar and spelling in two brief paragraphs, and no, I am not talking about future deputy prime minister Anglu Farrugia.
But if you were to read anything Anglu Farrugia has written, or hear him speak, you will be forgiven for wondering about the weeding-out process in the law course. That’s right, it doesn’t exist.
Anglu Farrugia isn’t a lawyer because he got into the law course as a mature student or because of entry requirements which are not sufficiently stringent. He is a lawyer because – on the basis of what I have seen of his writing, his reasoning and his speaking – people who can’t write, reason or speak can get through six years of law, graduate and get a warrant to practise.
The country is full of rubbish lawyers. The quality of lawyers has fallen drastically year on year over the last couple of decades. Older generations of lawyers tended to be all-round educated (that means not just law technicians), well-spoken, with sound thinking skills and able to use language with a certain degree of precision.
Now look at what we’re dealing with today: lawyers who can’t think, talk, spell or reason, and with whom it is impossible to have a conversation because their general knowledge is so poor. Some of them are unfamiliar even with the law itself. Having learned most things by rote as they clawed their way through their six years of university, they cannot understand the basic concepts of the spirit of the law beyond the letter. This level of ignorance is actually dangerous, leading to anomalies and failures of comprehension.
When the White Paper on the revision of our rent laws was published some years ago, it was riddled with flaws that were the direct result of illogical thinking and poor linguistic skills. Grandchildren, for example, were referred to throughout as ‘nephews’ in the English-language version. You will not need to have it explained to you why this is a high-risk anomaly when we are talking about a law which regulates the right of inheritance to a title of lease.
You would imagine that people who have read law for six years and practised law for many more years after that would have somehow acquired along the way the basic knowledge that ‘neputijiet’ might mean both grandchildren and nephews/nieces in Maltese, but English distinguishes between the relationships and even between the genders. But no.
Future Minister of Justice Jose Herrera said during the same discussion that the law course has become a “dumping-ground” for poor students because of the entry requirements. Like his friend Franco Debono, he is wrong.
It is the absence of a weeding-out system throughout the six years that has made the law course a dumping-ground for people of weak intellectual ability – some of whom, Herrera should have been quick to add but did not, come from Labour’s propaganda machine, Super One.
Entry requirements actually prove very little. The fact that I can get into the law course, should I ever wish to do so, as a mature student without an A-level in Maltese does not mean I am going to bring down the level or prestige of that course or that I am going to struggle to make it through the six years and end up as a lousy lawyer who can’t reason, argue a case or write a letter.
Equally, the fact that somebody has an A-level in Maltese does not mean that he can think logically, has a reasonably good IQ, can sort through and analyse information, or write well and succinctly.
The other professions which require a warrant to practise – architecture, engineering, medicine, even accountancy – have an extremely tough on-going weeding-out process. Poor students are asked to leave and there are certainly no multiple opportunities for self-rescue.
This is because there are obvious high risks to life and limb in having an architect, engineer or doctor who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, and other risks – though not directly to life and limb – in having an accountant who messes up.
Bad lawyers, too, can prejudice their client’s situation pretty badly, but it appears that nobody is overly concerned with that any longer.
A bad doctor or civil engineer can kill you, so the medicine and A & CE courses have in-built safeguards against foisting this kind of person on the unsuspecting public. A bad lawyer can do a great deal of damage, too, and it’s about time the university authorities – not our politicians, none of whose business it is – woke up to this fact and did something about it.
Kicking somebody out of the law course after six years of study is by far the better and more responsible decision than foisting on society yet another lousy lawyer who can do so much damage. It is thoroughly inappropriate to feel sorry for the student because he has ‘wasted six years’ and to ease things up to allow him to graduate, even with a thesis riddled with errors of grammar, spelling, reasoning and fact.
It wouldn’t happen in medicine or architecture, so it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in law. It’s not the entry requirements that are the problem here, Dr Debono and Dr Herrera, but the ongoing process of assessment.
I might add here that perhaps Franco Debono himself is a spectacular example of this.
The problem is not how they’re getting in, but how they’re getting out at the other end.
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Daphne for President, Prime Minister and Pope, and a Pulitzer to top it all off.
Franco for Cardinal
Third time lucky?
The Times gets their headlines in a muddle once again – http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120217/local/alleged-lesbian-attacker-does-not-turn-up-in-court.407235
“Once people are allowed in, they are pretty much reassured of graduating and even of a warrant to practise at the end of it all.”
That’s completely fallacious, Daphne. Just last year, a whopping 100 first year students (out of around 260) failed or dropped out of the course. A handful will fail in second year, and another couple dozen will fail third year. This is the norm.
That’s the kind of information I was looking for. Numbers. A bit more objective than some lawyer’s spelling mistakes.
A bit of both would be in order, methinks.
I’m with you that the law course (among others) doesn’t do a good job of separating the wheat from the chaff once they’re in, but it would help not to start off with a bloated first year full of students who barely know why they’re there.
Nothing sets the wrong tone for a degree like a first year spent with slackers, time-wasters and incompetents taking up all the resources that could be directed at the students who really should and want to be there.
The main resources when studying law (and the same is probably true for many other degrees) are your own time and your own brain. Other students, and may there be thousands of them, don’t take this away.
It is clear that what Franco is after is the ‘prestige’ associated with the profession. Is this request the latest condition for political stability?
It seems both Franco and Jose’ identify the law course as the stepping stone into parliament. Does Joseph’s suggestion to have unelected technocrats dovetail with their view?
Imagine, lawyers becoming the ‘elected’ legislature’s technicians analysing the merits of industrial policy, healthcare et al. with those who weren’t. Could explain why an architect/talkshow host/mayor feels the need to study law.
I think that the older generation of lawyers are more literate and sensible (I’m referring to those generations containing professionals of the calibre of Albert Ganado and Geoffrey Valenzia, amongst others) because they formed part of a course that catered to far fewer people.
Therefore part-time lecturers could provide more quality time to their students, and were often happy to mingle with them socially.
Up until the late nineties, entry requirements were still ‘stringent’, in that a prospective lawyer at least required a ‘C’ grade (really no big deal to begin with, I passed both exams with only a week of serious preparation) in A level English and Maltese.
Nowadays the course is flooded with people who do not meet these requirements, leaving part-time lecturers bewildered at the prospect of having to face 250 students in one lecture, half of whom are semi-literate and ignorant, reluctant to discuss anything and insistent that their lecturer ‘itina n-notes’ so that they can learn everything by rote.
Discussion was non-existent in the law course in my day – as was any form of ‘weeding-out’ process – and I graduated in the mid-noughties. From what I can understand, a fair few of the part-time lecturers (meriting the description of ‘part-timers’) are the bumpkins who could not pass their A levels in Maltese and English in the first place.
So it’s a kind of ‘reap what we sow’ vicious circle. It is a depressing state of affairs, and although I finally did graduate, I can say hand on heart that I wasted a fair few years of my life in that cursed course which, to add insult to injury, counts for nothing beyond a rock that’s 24 by 12 km.
Being reluctant to waste another day of my life in that dump which people in Malta call ‘Il-Qorti’, I swiftly emigrated.
I agree it should be an ongoing process. However you mentioned courses such as medicine, engineering, etc.
To get into medicine you need As and Bs in Biology and Chemistry at A Level and one other B in the intermediates. To get into engineering and architecture, you need a C in pure maths.
Getting such grades in those subjects requires far more commitment than a pass in English.
In the course for dental surgeons, at the Faculty of Dental Surgery, there is a numerus clausus and only six students are accepted in the course each year; this means that only the best candidates are accepted.
Anglu Farrugia uses old friends in the police force quite often and some of them were even asked to manipulate police reports.
I have a friend who is a top lawyer globally who had been to Malta on business. He couldn’t believe how unprofessional the lawyers are here. One supposedly ‘top lawyer’ was making comments about the new girl/intern and how hot she was.
My friend had to tell him to his face that they as lawyers are meant to be professional. Needless to say he has avoided the island ever since.
I have been told that the psychology master’s degree involves practical experience which is not vetted, apparently, by an external examiner, and neither does it have an observer, even though university regulations require this. Other faculties follow these regulations much more closely.
A particularly dangerous explosive mixture for a budding university student to graduate as a lawyer would be a policeman, especially one with strong connections either with the criminal underworld or with the political milieu (if not both). There is no need to carry out some profound research to provide clamorous recent examples.
I agree completely. It was hoped that some police officers would follow law courses and become lawyers so as to present themselves better as prosecution officers, this because it’s not the first time we have seen hardened criminals absolved by a good defence team that could portray them as victims and martyrs at the same time.
Yet, the world outside the police force with the right connections is far more profitable. That is why there should be some sort of employment binding clause when sending officials to university (remembering that they were getting full wages during their study period, not a little stipend).
Not related to the subject being discussed, but here you have it. Unbelievable, the leader of the opposition Pratikament Prim Ministru baptising government projects.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120217/local/project-for-mosta-housing-estate-announced-by-opposition-leader.407241
Daphne, you are spot on here.
This problem has bedevilled the law course for generations.
The only difference is that, when I was at university, there were around fifty students, in all, reading law. Now there are, maybe, a thousand.
In my days one or two morons made it to the end of the law course every two or three years. Nowadays this number must run into hundreds. This is the reason why the problem has reached monumental proportions.
When I argued this point with someone very high up in the hierarchy of the alma mater, his opinion was that it was better to have an idiot with a law degree than one without.
So be it.
Can you let me know if there is a red-light room in the Maltese Parliament?
I was shocked by the words and innocent look of Justyne Caruana when she said that she really felt she was abused there.
Your article focuses on a problem which has been ignored and swept under the carpet for far too long.
It is well known that academic standards in the law course have plummeted over the last three decades and much of the responsibility for this must be pinned on the faculty’s half-hearted assessment and examination systems which fail to properly filter and eliminate those students who objectively should not make the grade.
“The other professions which require a warrant to practise – architecture, engineering, medicine, even accountancy – have an extremely tough on-going weeding-out process. Poor students are asked to leave and there are certainly no multiple opportunities for self-rescue”
Teachers are also weeded out, both during the course and after one graduates.
Although maybe not a life-and-limb situation, if a student repeatedly fails teaching practice during the four year course, he/she is out, whether it’s their third year or their fourth year.
Besides that, since 2007, newly appointed teachers have to follow a two-year mentoring period before being given a professional warrant.
Another difference is that, obviously, teachers do not have half the status of the other proferssions you mentioned.
I assure you, Lilla, that teachers who graduated in the late 80s and 90s had a two-year probation period too.
I was one of them and we had random inspections.
When we were given the warrant signed by the then Minister of Education Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, it was backdated but given only after we had passed the test and from Teacher I we were then promoted to Teacher II.
And yes, during our course (at that time it was still a 5 year course) we had one case in particular of a student who failed his teaching practice in the final year. He never became a teacher, in fact.
I hope we’re not equating an A level pass in English and Maltese at Grade C level to being able to ‘think, talk, spell or reason’. Since these particular subjects are softer options than many others, weeding needs to be done mostly throughout the duration of the course at university.
I’m not sure why only English and Maltese should be accepted for entry. Most A level subjects require students to write essays. So how are students passing these A levels if they are semi-literate and can’t argue a topic coherently to save their lives?
If A levels were only awarded to students who are of a sufficiently high standard of education then any two A levels would be sufficient, because the proper use of language would be part and parcel of whichever subject they studied. And there are a lot of subjects that are far more taxing to the brain than the two languages we’re bombarded with from birth.
The problem is a different one. The levels of English have dropped considerably. It was always hard to get a grade A but nowadays it’s almost a mirage.
Students have to prepare not only language essays, literary texts and linguistics. They have literary criticism which is all about interpretation and, to my mind, forms a crucial part on the interpretation of the law itself for a good lawyer’s job is that of knowing how to juggle around words and come out with a convincing argument.
Why English is considered a softer option I cannot understand. I only think that, since the levels have dropped, a lot of up-marking is being done which means more mediocrity.
I have always been against this practice, personally but having been an examiner in Malta and abroad, I know it is quite common practice. Today, many students are plain lazy and instead of “punching” them back with their results, most university bodies prefer to inflate marks by 5 or 10%.
I find the language argument holds more ground when students present write ups for their Economics topics. I’ve seen colleagues giving wonderful marks to well-written essays that had no value whatsoever subject wise.
They were perfect in their grammar, punctuation, presentation but the contents were useless. Yet this is more a question of validity rather than difficulty.
I think it is quite obvious that the law course needs BOTH proper gatekeeping as well as ongoing ‘weeding out’ as you put it. No need to prioritize one over the other. Both are crucial.
Can’t the market weed out bad lawyers (how ever they are defined)?
To take your example of the lawyer with numerous spelling mistakes in his letter: other lawyers, his clients, the courts will notice this. They will talk about it. If a lawyer constantly loses his cases, he won’t find many new clients. A hot-shot-lawyer however will gain a good reputation and will find many clients, usually more than he can handle, so that he can pick the most profitable (or interesting if he is so inclined) cases.
It’s interesting that everybody says “education used to be better” or “the law degree that I got 30 years ago was worth much more”, yet when we look back at discussions from 20 or 30 years ago, exactly the same was said. In fact, we can go all the way back to Plato who complained about the youth of his days.
If everything is always going downhill everywhere, how come we have progress as a human race on this planet? It can’t be that bad.