On September 7th Ministers Evarist Bartolo and Ian Borg announced that engineers graduating from MCAST will be eligible to receive the Engineering Warrant after two years of work in the profession. This news shocked University of Malta engineering students and graduates as they state that the UoM standards for the mechanical engineering course are much higher than those of MCAST and will ultimately result in a higher quality degree even though both MCAST and UoM graduates end up with a Bachelor of Engineering Degree.
We asked UoM engineering students and graduates to chime in on this issue. The following are their comments.
“It is unfair and unprofessional giving MCAST Engineering students and graduates the opportunity of receiving the Engineering Warrant” said UoM students and graduates.
To them, the UoM course is way more demanding than the MCAST course. In their words, assignments are tougher, subjects which span over multiple semesters at UoM are condensed at MCAST and lecturers at UoM are less lenient than those at MCAST when it comes to marking. The latter is seen in certain subjects which cause a drastic decrease in first year UoM students like in a particular year in which 110 starting students dropped to around 80 students from first to second year due to the tough nature of the course.
Some other comments which sparked interested stated that if they want to identify MCAST and UoM students as equals, then the entry requirements must be equal to those of UoM and the assessments given to MCAST students on par with those of UoM.
Current UoM students argued that particular students currently in the MCAST engineering course have part time jobs in a demanding position or work whilst students at UoM could barely enjoy free time during the four-year course, adding to the imbalance of the courses. The MCAST course has since the writing of this article changed the course requirements needing applicants’ grades to be an average of C or better. So an A and E in physics and maths A-Level is still sufficient to be eligible for the course commencing 2019. Previous students could be eligible with both maths and physics at grade E.
Another issue outlined by students is that students applying for an engineering course know the difference between MCAST and UoM outcomes. The UoM course comes with a degree and the possibility of a warrant, whilst (up until now) the MCAST course did not offer a warrant after graduating. The fact that students applying for MCAST with the full knowledge of not being able to receive a warrant after graduation and then fighting for one angered many UoM students.
To them this means that a school specialised in training highly skilled technicians (MCAST), is going over and above their capacity, and training fully qualified and warranted engineers in just two extra years after having completed the MCAST diploma. Students argued that this will therefore decrease the UoM applicants as these will choose the easy way out of the course and they will still get full recognition even though the calibre of the course is different.
Some other students said that not only is the UoM course tougher than the MCAST course, but it also competes with the rest of the EU and they said that clear proof of this is in ERASMUS exam marks, in which Maltese students achieve better grades abroad than locally for the same subject’s equivalent with the same amount of study work. In turn, students said that there are those who apply for MCAST and after completing their studies apply for the UoM course just to be eligible for the warrant, meaning that these students ‘wasted’ time. These same students are seeking a form of compensation for wasted time. Adding to this, some students also said that they know people who failed the UoM course after repeating a year in said course and then applied for the same course at MCAST and their grades suddenly shot up.
“Il-linja ta’ Inginier m’ghadiex worth it. U mil-lum ‘il quddiem, izjed. U nhossni hlejt 5 snin minn hajti” – An engineering graduate from UoM that upon completing MCAST studies applied to the UoM course.
“Mur gib kirurgu li dahal ghall-kors bla bazi ta’ bijologija O-level x’ konna nghidu.” – Implying that society does not care as much about engineers as it does for other fields.
“Jaghmel sens li inginiera (ta’ UoM) ikunu jafu x-xoghol kollu, hands-on u teorija, imma mbaghad ma naqbilx li ghax taghmel 80% hands on (MCAST) titqies ta’ inginier warranted.” – Implying the great difference between the two courses.
“Immagina taghmilha t-tobba jew l-avukati x’hassle jinqala’” – Implying that giving the possibility of a warrant to MCAST graduates in the health and law fields would cause uproar from UoM students in the same situation.
The last issue that was brought forward was that working engineers are rarely paid for overtime and are also not paid enough, this means that an unwarranted worker with a lower ranking in the same company can easily reach the same salary as a warranted engineer working extra unpaid hours.
This is not an elitism issue – this is a professional one. The crux of the issue is not “Your course is easier than ours, and so we feel it’s unfair that you should get equal recognition”, but rather “Your course lacks certain key elements that are fundamental to engineering, and so it is unfair that an MCAST graduate be given the same merits as a university graduate”. It stems from a gross misunderstanding of what an engineering professional does.
A student does not choose to go to university to get their BEng simply for the brownie points of “attending uni”, in the same way that a practical arts student might choose to go to university over MCAST (which some argue would be the preferred institution). An engineer goes to university because engineering is not a vocational field, and requires extensive academic training, on par with scientists and medical doctors. It is therefore important, now more than ever, that the general public realises what the true job of an engineer is, if they are to appreciate the concerns raised by Engineers and UoM students.
A particular comment stood out in The Times of Malta’s article by lecturer Marc Anthony Azzopardi saying “Every year more and more students are choosing to undertake the Engineering course offered by MCAST rather than the one offered by the University of Malta because they think that it is easier. The real reason behind this is that the University’s Engineering course goes into further depth and teaches students both practical and theoretical aspects. Giving students of both institutions the same qualifications is unfair to current University students and will keep worsening the University’s student intake.”
KSU and UESA (University Engineering Students’ Association) have since released comments regarding the matter and said that “as long as there is equality in standards between the engineering courses in both institutions, any engineering student in either institution should have the right to sit for an interview and be granted the warrant.” Meaning that there is the need for equal standards between the highly similar yet opposing courses.
More importantly KSU and UESA request that the full results of the evaluation carried out by German experts, the ASIIN (Akkreditierungsagentur für Studiengänge der Ingenieurwissenschaften, der Informatik, der Naturwissenschaften und der Mathematik e. V.) meaning Accreditation Agency for Degrees of Engineering, Computer Science, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, who evaluated both UoM and MCAST engineering courses, to be made public for clarity’s sake.