Shouldn’t it have been the Education Minister who handled this – alone?
Representatives of an organisation described by Malta Today as “a company which runs universities in the UK and other countries” were met by:
the Prime Minister
the Deputy Prime Minister
the Education Minister
the Gozo Minister (WTF?)
the Health Minister (WTF? WTF?)
Il-vera repubblika tal-banana.
When a foreign delegation from the education business (or any other business) gets to meet, at the drop of a hat, the PM, the deputy PM, and three cabinet ministers en masse, they immediately think:
Pushover. Cheap.
We are more powerful than they are and have more leverage.
These souk-hawkers been in government for five minutes and they’ve downgraded themselves already by laying out their embossed leather lanterns and begging people to buy.
Ah, but they’re going to send us 3,000 students! Oh really? What, to study here free of charge like all EU students do?
How is that going to help Malta, exactly?
Adding 3,000 students who don’t pay fees will just take a further toll on the university in every way possible. True, they will also need to rent places to stay and buy food to eat, and so on. But let’s be practical here.
What the university needs is students who pay fees because Maltese and other EU students don’t. You need to be looking at China and India, not at the “UK and other countries (for which read Europe)”.
In any case, just go to the link below and you will see that INTO is a British organisation that operates in Britain, and it is more or less a charitable NGO which works to get teenagers from Britain’s poorest and most deprived backgrounds INTO university.
Hardly a company.
Hardly a business.
Hardly a source of revenue for Malta.
What INTO wants from Malta is help. That’s a good thing; I approve of pro bono. But for the government to portray it as a fantastic source of income by bringing 3,000 students to Malta? I don’t think so.
And having the INTO delegation met by the PM, the deputy PM and three cabinet ministers? I don’t think so either.
But after visiting the INTO website I now know, at least, what the health minister was doing there.
Amazing, isn’t it, how Malta Today takes at face value whatever Labour/the government says and does, while investigating the minutiae of Tonio Fenech’s ruddy clock.
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http://intouniversity.org/content/why-intouniversity-needed
And teenagers from Britain’s poorest and most deprived backgrounds will feel right at home in Paceville.
Good work Daphne. Keep them coming.
It was all planned since before the election.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/…/Labour-to-tap-into-international-student-...
Thank you, Daphne.
It’s been only one month and I can’t take anymore lies.
X’taqa ghan-nejk Joseph. Bdejt kmieni.
Last year the medical course attracted over 40 non-fee-paying British students, bumping up the number of 1st year medical students to over 180 when because of patient student ratio, Malta can accommodate only around 160.
This year, there are over 400 UK students that have applied. Anyone with the pre requisite entry qualifications HAS TO BE accepted.
Straight to the wall, and in less than 12 months. Tristan de Cunha, here I come.
Excuse me. I’m at a loss here, how can the University of Malta accept all the students, Maltese, British or from EU member countries that qualify? Surely it’s only logical that only a certain number of students can be catered for at any one moment, whether paying or not?
Taking the medical students case, if only 160 students can be enrolled as per the ratio quoted above, why did the UoM accept the extra 20?
Well they are paying some lower tuition fees actually even though they are in the EU. See this
http://www.um.edu.mt/int-eu/visitingstudents/tuitionfees
Mhux ghax qatt kelli xi dubju…. you`re the champion.
Looks like Joseph Muscat and co are not only out of their depth, but are now clutching at straws – and that only after four weeks at the helm.
Anyone noted how, during the budget debate, all MPs on the government side sat quietly like schoolchildren while Lawrence Gonzi set about telling them, and showing them, what truly capable and responsible government was all about.
Common sense is not so common, with Labour it has become a total rarity.
Labour Party is just common.
The crude and vulgar performance by Joseph Muscat in delivering his closing speech to the budget session in parliament, following up on the taunts and insults in the text of the speech by the President two days before, is clear evidence of that.
However, they are common.
That’s exactly what we need to bankrupt the island: encourage all the offspring of Maltese descent born in Canadia, Australia, the UK etc, etc, to come to Malta for a free higher education paid for by the Maltese government.
The foreign ‘charity’ must have followed the electoral campaign here and heard about the generous stipends to University and MCAST students which the PN and Gonzi governments were able to finance.
They probably thought that this is a social benefit and that it would be nice to put 3,000 students on this monthly benefit here in Malta.
On their part, it is ridiculous that 1 Prime Minister and 4 Ministers should meet a delegation from this organisation.
What a waste of time for the Prime Minister and most of the other Ministers. It seems that they had nothing better to do. I don’t remember the Prime Minister having dicussed the redundances with Baxter. He left it all to Chris Cardona.
Come on. Did you hear him yesterday saying that the his MPs are there working for us from sunrise till night. Imsieken.
And last night, our new PM announced as an “immediate measure before summer” his government’s willingness to hear from anybody with any idea on how to improve the economy.
“Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses….”
Here is one idea: copy Cyprus.
Now where have I heard that before?
Over the next five years, Muscat’s government will be receiving hundreds of such proposals.
Some will be valid and worth pursuing. Others (like this one from INTO) will be dubious and not in Malta’s best interest. If he were to treat all of such proposals in this manner, he and all of his Cabinet will grind to a halt.
I suspect INTO had already approached the Maltese government in the previous legislature and they were rejected.
This says it all… we were warned 2 months ago
http://hibernatingfrommalta.blogspot.com/2013/02/labours-plan-to-part-privatise-uom-and.html
That makes Labour’s apparent desparation to get them in even worse. I’d like to know what they exactly get out of such a scenario.
Dawn kolla kummiedji. Fl-Universita diga hemm numrus sostanzjali ta studenti barranin. Din is-sena fil-medicina dahlu mal-100 student barrani peress li fir-Renju Unit l-universitajiet ghollew il-mizati. U dan minghajr ma qaghdna nitaghlbu.
Il-gvern ta’ qabel hadem biex fl-istess kors nattiraw studenti mil-Kuwajt, dawk ihallu l-flus ghax ihallsu ghal-kors.
“Ah, but they’re going to send us 3,000 students! Oh really? What, to study here free of charge like all EU students do?”
I interpret the situation somewhat differently. I think there is more than meets the eye.
The foreign EU students would be made to pay but it will also serve as an excuse to make the Maltese students pay as well. This can be achieved through the introduction of fees for Maltese students countered by the introduction a grant system to Maltese citizens to counter the cost of fees. The entitlement for such a grant would be given while exploiting some legal loophole (e.g. father being a Maltese registered worker who would have already number of NI contributions) to discriminate between Maltese and other EU citizens. It would also provide the possibly for incorporating the stipends or even replacing them) with their eventual phasing out (directly through a series of cuts, and/or in its typical Machiavellian style, freezing them till they loose any financial meaning).
Finally this would serve to achieve the personal conviction of the present Minister of Finance that stipends are a “no go” feature of state education! Even if the venture with INTO fails, the objective of eliminating stipends and possibly free tertiary education would have been achieved!
The last thing Malta needs is Britain’s knife-toting scum. I’ve lived in the UK long enough to know this.
EU citizens are treated equally at law across the Union: So, price discrimination is not possible among EU member states.
In Malta, students do not pay fees; rather, government incentivises tertiary education through stipends.
Are these British students to be paid stipends?
If this is the case, isn’t this whole ‘mise en scene’ simply generating greater burdens on an already precarious deficit? Are we going down Nanny State Road?
The entire University (business) world (e.g. the Russell Group in the UK) battles for Chinese students to increase revenues and consequently update University infrastructure and quality.
Instead our ‘beloved’ Duce goes in the opposite direction.
So far, all I heard from the government are: (a) concrete instances of expenditure that come into effect immediately, and (b) abstract plans “to be revealed in the coming days” on how government ‘intends’ to generate jobs and so on.
U Marlene running the ministry minn wara l-quinti.
They probably got wind about President Abela’s voluntary work in Peru , and saw a possible opportunity to request a placement for 3000 of their students in Malta.
Muscat’s performance yesterday in parliament was more of an SOS rather than launching of schemes.
What did he launch? Nothing.
He just begged the private sector to come foward with ideas beacuse Labour knows not what to do.
The first suggestion of the private sector to itself will be to take flight.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/budget2013/Enemalta-s-835-million-debt-situation-confirmed-energy-minister-20130409
See – he even bought a nice yellow hat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bob_the_builder.jpg
Where was Konrad Mizzi in the past couple of years?
Enemalta’s accounts up to 2010 are published on the corporation’s website, and they show 700 million euros of debt at end of 2010.
It was to be expected that with the construction of a new power station which was completed in 2012, there would be some more debt.
But did the Minister say anything about Enemalta’s assets?
At the end of 2010, Enemalta had more assets than debt, and therefore one can presume that this situation has not significantly changed by end of 2012.
Shame on you, Minister.
The biggest revenue-generating degree is the Doctor of Medicine – students require training at mater dei and other health institutions.
Oh my – it’s not just Malta Today that can’t do the maths.
The relevance of the Gozo minister is more of a question.
Yes, just like the 80s students testing on human beings.
It isn’t. The suggestion is to have a second university in Gozo.
Five ministers (including 1 prime minister) to meet a delegation from a British charity?
Did the ministers also bring along their spouses as volunteers to round it up to 10?
Do I see a herd of white elephants coming our way?
Dr Anthony Zammit is being touted as the new prisons director.
Quite a few people cheered and celebrated when they heard that Baroness Thatcher died [I watched it on Sky News].
Even a popular British singer [Morissey] slandered her on the news, but none of these were threatened with death or pissing on their graves or tied up to a car bumper and dragged along, because they live in a free country and they can express themselves however they like regardless of what each and everyone of us think.