Malta creates visa problems for students, other countries can’t get enough of them

by Noel Grima

One of the main problems facing the internationalisation of the local private education sector is the issuance of visas. Maltese embassies are often receiving a refusal recommendation from the competent local authorities when prospective students from various countries apply to study in Malta for further and higher education.

Computer Domain has embarked on an aggressive campaign in certain countries to attract long-stay students to Malta and it applies very stringent selection criteria to filter the applications received by its students’ recruitment offices overseas. Just to mention one example: Computer Domain receives around 500 applications every week from India, which are filtered down to less than 10 due to the very strict quality criteria it adopts. Thus, it would be a disincentive to companies like Computer Domain, which does not find the expected cooperation from the local authorities. However, it insists that it finds great cooperation from certain Maltese embassies abroad.

But on the other hand, Computer Domain’s subsidiary institute in Cyprus finds complete government support in its bid to attract students from non-EU countries. Between 20,000 and 30,000 students from India study in Cyprus.

What Malta is losing, another country is taking up.

Nick Callus, Computer Domain Group chairman, said in an interview that he just cannot understand why he and others in the same sector encounter so many difficulties in obtaining visas for people who want to come and study in Malta just because of the fear that they could leave Malta and go to some other country.

At one point, a group of 12 Indian students were detained upon arrival at Malta airport and the official processing their cases asked why they had come here to study ICT, how much they had paid for the course and other similar questions. These students feel unwanted in Malta once they set foot in our airport and spread such unfortunate experiences to other prospective students in India. It must be borne in mind that all these checks will have been done already by the Maltese embassies.

Mr Callus remarked that it is responses like this that sometimes make people decide to go elsewhere, at a time when our economy needs every input it can get.

Even the UK is much more open to such students. In any event, the Maltese government could also enter into a

government-to-government agreement with, for instance, Saudi Arabia, as the UK government has done, guaranteeing – in the case of the UK – some 30,000 Saudi Arabian students a year.