As the saying says, every coin has two sides. We often talk about the positives of our experience at MCAST, however addressing and talking about the negative sides of the school are a means to improve them and make the college a better place, both for new and current students.
Truth be told I was never so keen on applying for a course at MCAST, my mind was always keen on going to University. Call me closed minded but I it was something I wanted, to attend a university and live the “uni life” as well as wanting to study architecture. I ended up choosing what I wanted and spent a year at the University of Malta doing a Diploma in Design Foundation. After graduation I decided that I wanted to find a course, which focused solely on design. Seeing as there are limited options for this line of study I found myself researching MCAST and seeing what they can offer me. I must point out that unlike the many people who see MCAST as a second choice, in this case I chose MCAST because it was the only institute that was offering this course. Something other university should pick up on. By offering different courses MCAST is establishing itself as a first choice school something that I am proud to say. Fortunate enough the year I applied, a new course was being introduced which was Spatial Design, this being the closest subject I've found to what I actually wanted to study. The following October I started the new course at MCAST in Mosta and from the very first days I could notice the drastic changes. From being used to spending days at a huge friendly campus to a school, which hosts over 500 students in such a small space. I started questioning myself why a school filled with so many creative minds studying all kinds of design, was designed so horribly. As a spatial design student it’s a shame to see such a beautiful site with spectacular views yet a school so unorganized and old fashioned. This is now my second year at the school and I came to a realisation that besides acts of vandalism by students or outsiders the school is also partly to blame. Year after year complaints or ideas by students or student organisations are brought forward to the administration yet nothing is ever done about it. At one point last year the situation got so out of hand that female bathrooms were out of order for weeks on end before they were cleaned by the janitors which comes to show that the state of the school is given little to no importance at all. Space is another major issue, each year the more and more students are accepted to start their studies here yet there is really nowhere to put them. There are simply not enough classrooms for the amount of students attending and the amount of lectures that need to be held every day. There are cases that chairs have to be borrowed from other classrooms, as there would not be enough for everyone to be seated during a lesson. Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg, the library is much worse. I have been to many libraries and got used to seeing three floors of endless books and comfortable areas for individual and group work to the sorry state of our library, which is a single room which is smaller than most classrooms with just a few options to choose from. Having three computers, which might be older than some of the students who use them. Space has become such a problem at the school that some group work that we had to work on last year had to be done sitting down in the corridor on our laptops. The administration is not helping matters. From being told we are being treated as a mature and responsible adults to feeling as if I am back at secondary school. Students seem to have no right to speak up and the only time we are allowed to speak to anyone from the administration is for half an hour every day between 12.00 and 12.30. With so many students and so many things that need to be addressed by both students and teachers one can imagine how hectic this time of the day would be in such a small hall were the offices are situated. The staff is bombarded with forms that need to be filled, certificates of sick students, complaints, requests, reports, appeals, appointments and everything else that they have to deal with. Emails often tend to be a waste of time as you would rarely get a reply or would be waiting days or weeks, even emails which are marked as urgent. One of the things that makes a student really feel like they're back in primary school is the percentage limit of lessons that can be missed. I am a 20-year-old student and there are far older students attending this college, I am pretty sure we know that missing lessons for no reason is not a good idea. So a penalty for missing lessons would result in practically nothing let alone getting accused of missing lessons when actually missing none, this seems to be a real problem within the institute. I sometimes regret my decision of leaving the university to attend the college but the course makes me hold on to it. Since I actually have something to compare it to, I found the problems to effect me more than students who have only been to MCAST and nowhere else thus don't know any better. I just hope that eventually the institute improves itself and listens to what some students have to say as it does have potential to be one of the best universities in Malta if there is motive to be so.
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Rita Curmi2nd year Student Archives
May 2017
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