Strange goings on at Zonqor

As much as we would wholeheartedly like to welcome each and any further development of the country’s educational offering and the opening up of more prospects for Maltese students, there are just too many strange goings on, loose ends and unanswered questions on the American University of Malta (AUM) project to do that.

Not only are NGOs up in arms over the university’s proposed location, but the way in which news of the development was carefully and slowly leaked out by the government in such an orchestrated manner, but which at the same time allowed the misinformation to flow freely, much of that perpetrated by the media itself, perhaps with the prodding of the government.

In the meantime, promised answers to questions posed by our newsroom to the Jordanian investors, Sadeen Education Investment Ltd, have remained unanswered. In fact, it seems that the only party to the whole initiative – one which ironically has had the least involvement with the grand project, DePaul University (the only American factor in the equation that is the American University of Malta) – is the one that has given straightforward answers to our questions. More on that further down.

First, the name. Any university can call itself an ‘American university’, and 28, including our own, have chosen to do so. Some are renowned for their academic excellence and some less so. Such universities usually offer ‘American-style’ education, with classes taught in English and they also tend to have a liberal-arts focus, broad academic majors, and a certain degree of faculty self-governance.

The other thing they have in common is that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is no umbrella ‘American University’ that runs, oversees or in fact has anything to do with such institutions, as opposed to what one section of the press was presumably led to believe earlier this week.

From what Chicago’s DePaul University informed this newspaper, and in fact anyone else who was asking this week, was that the Jordanian construction company that the government actually signed the contract with this week had merely contracted DePaul University to draw up initial curriculum materials for programmes at AUM – five Bachelor degrees, one MBA, and four Doctoral level programmes.

The university also clearly stated, on the fact that its name has been wildly bandied about in Malta, that “DePaul University only has authorized SEI/AUM to state that its ‘academic programs were developed in collaboration with DePaul University’. It is amply clear that the American university that was sold to the country is, in actual fact, only marginally ‘American’.

But this does not appear to be the line that the country was sold when news of what, exactly, this major educational investment began to emerge – first with a tantalising statement by the Prime Minister a couple of Sundays ago and then with fragmented information coming out in different sections of the media.

Moreover, DePaul University has said it has not entertained negotiations or discussions with the Maltese government in relation to the American University of Malta project.

For anyone who may have missed yesterday’s newspapers, here is a synopsis of the rest of DePaul’s loaded statement.

DePaul University will not be establishing a branch campus and will not be issuing degrees in Malta. The university said it is merely “willing” to continue collaboration and cooperation with SEI and AUM, by providing consultative academic support to the project (further programme development, policies and academic structures development). While such an agreement is being negotiated, no agreement in this direction has been signed yet.

DePaul University has not committed any financial resources to the land being used, building(s) being built, infrastructure, programmes, or anything else – it has simply been paid for services rendered.

No DePaul staff will be provided to AUM, nor will it be involved in hiring faculty or staff for AUM and will not be involved in AUM operations. The university also stressed that it has no involvement nor responsibility nor authority nor knowledge related to the selection process for the site of the American University of Malta.

This is quite concerning and quite opposed to what the public had been led to believe.

This is all quite apart from the raging debate over the location of the AUM campus, which has been earmarked for a stretch of coastal, virgin and arable land near Zonqor Point, Marsascala. If the government had believed that a construction project on such a stretch of land would be more palatable simply because it was a project for an educational institution, it was sadly mistaken.

No less than six of the country’s main environmental NGOs yesterday released statements condemning the plans.

Some cried foul over the fact that the government is already in negotiations with the owners of privately-held land bang in the middle of the projected project, despite the fact that they had been given the impression, and the Prime Minister’s public statement, that an alternative site selection process would be undertaken. The government would have usually clarified matters to the effect that it was still looking into alternative sites by way of a press release, but no such press release was forthcoming.

It is becoming increasingly clear, they said, that their consultation process on the matter, on the eve of the contract’s signing earlier this week, was ‘no more than a cosmetic exercise, with all the eNGOs and local councils called in for nothing more than to legitimise a fait accompli’.

Recent news that plans for the AUM have been in the works for the last year, as evidenced by the fact that the AUM website had been registered as far back as last summer, perhaps show that it was not only the site’s location that was a fait accompli.

It is hoped that the whole uproar over this AUM affair will in the future be put down to poor communications management from the government, and that the AUM project will not go down as simply another white elephant of a project.