AUM ‘has not breached any condition that justifies revocation of licence’

The National Commission for Further and Higher Education yesterday insisted that the American University of Malta (AUM) had “not breached any condition that justifies the revocation of its licence.”

It also said that AUM had kept it informed when replacing its faculty staff, with the commission being satisfied of the personnel who were recently hired.

The AUM has been mired in controversy ever since the government agreed to give it a large parcel of virgin land in Zonqor, Marsascala.

Over the past few weeks questions have been raised as to whether the university breached any of the conditions imposed by the NCFHE when it received accreditation in September 2016.

The AUM’s ability to provide quality education was further questioned when it emerged that its entire academic faculty had been fired and replaced.

Apart from this, AUM only managed to start operations with a handful of students and fell behind schedule on works on it Cospicua campus, prompting calls for its planned Zonqor campus to be scrapped.

In a statement, NCFHE said the process to apply for a provider licence is “extremely rigorous” and includes evaluations by panels of external expert and the process typically takes a number of months.

“In the case of AUM, in fact, the initial provider accreditation process took fourteen months and was concluded in June 2016. The licence was eventually granted in September of the same year once AUM had agreed to all the conditions stipulated and outlined in the NCFHE press conference of June 2016.”

Licences to tertiary education providers are always issued with a set of attendant conditions, some of which are common to all providers and a number of which are tailored to the individual provider, the commission said.

“In the case of the AUM the special conditions issued were extremely stringent and exhaustive. These included the requirement to undertake an annual quality audit by Clemson University, NCFHE spot-checks at least once a year on any aspect of the operations of AUM, external quality audits after the second and fourth academic year for the purposes of confirming or revoking the accreditation granted, approval by NCFHE of all academic staff to be engaged during the first 24 months of operations, submission to the Commission of the template for the Student Agreement and various other conditions.

“Once conditions have been set and a license issued, the provider is obliged to ensure that these conditions are being met as otherwise it can be subject to fines or in the extreme case, its license being revoked. The conditions under which a license can be revoked are set out in Subsidiary Legislation 327.433. To date, the AUM has not breached any condition that can justify the NCFHE to consider revoking its license.”

The commission said it was also important to note that certain actions can only be taken after the lapse of specific periods of time either as dictated by legislation or as stipulated in specific license conditions. “As an example, by default, the law only obliges the NCFHE to perform an external quality audit prior to the lapse of five years from the granting of a license. In the case of AUM, this period has been considerably shortened making it more onerous on the AUM.”

In its application, the AUM always made it clear that the number of students, academic and non-academic staff will rise in stages over a number of years and the AUM has only been functioning academically since last September, the commission said.

Clarifying on the recent firing and engagement of staff, NCFHE said AUM had sent in all the relevant CVs and the commission was “satisfied with the calibre of the lecturers which have been recruited.”