Knights College Malta Joins EURASHE: Maltese Education Steps Onto European Stage

Knights College joins EURASHE: Maltese educators step onto the European stage
By Hot Malta Staff

Sliema’s seafront was still blinking itself awake last Monday when Knights College Malta fired off the announcement that has since ricocheted through every staff-room from Valletta to Victoria: the island’s youngest degree-granting institution has been accepted as full member of EURASHE, the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education. For a country whose university dates back to 1592, the news may sound like administrative small-print. But on an island where every new door to Europe is celebrated with a village band and a tray of pastizzi, the membership is being read as a cultural coming-of-age.

“Malta has always punched above its weight,” rector Prof. Simon Mercieca told Hot Malta over coffee in the college’s newly refurbished 19th-century town-house campus. “Now we’re not just the little gem in the Mediterranean; we’re a recognised contributor to the future of European higher education.” Knights College, founded in 2018 by a consortium of Maltese educators and tech investors, delivers British-accredited degrees in digital business, AI and hospitality, currently to 480 students—60 % of them Maltese, the rest an ever-growing Erasmus mosaic of Italians, Serbians and Nigerian gamers lured by generous scholarship schemes.

EURASHE is no mere club. The Brussels-based network counts 1,200 applied-science universities and university colleges across 42 countries, shaping EU policy on everything from micro-credentials to green-campus standards. Membership gives Knights a seat—albeit a small one—at the table where the next wave of Bologna reforms will be drafted. In practical terms, it means Maltese lecturers can now bid directly for Erasmus+ pots worth €18 million annually, while students gain automatic access to 90-day work placements in cities like Lyon, Gdańsk and Porto without the usual paper avalanche.

For local families the timing is exquisite. Malta’s post-COVID economy is hungry for hybrid graduates who can flip from coding to guest-relations in two languages. “My daughter wants to stay close to home, but she also wants a passport to the world,” said Mariella Camilleri, 52, shopping for textbooks at the campus pop-up shop. “Knights being in EURASHE means her degree carries the same weight as one from Holland—without the €12 k tuition.”

Culturally, the move plugs into a deeper narrative. Knights takes its name from the island’s medieval hospitaller past, when crusading knights built Europe’s first planned city and, arguably, its first multicultural campus. Today’s students sip flat-whites beneath coats-of-arms carved in 1530, but attend hackathons on blockchain supply-chains. “We’re layering the future onto the limestone,” laughed student president Leah Pace, 21, whose dissertation tracks how VR can re-create Mdina for remote learners. EURASHE membership, she argues, lets Malta export that hybrid heritage: “We’re not just borrowing Europe; Europe is borrowing us.”

The ripple effects are already visible. Birkirkara print-shop owner Jason Borg won the tender to produce 3,000 EURASHE-branded prospectuses in Maltese and English, his biggest order since the 2018 EU presidency. Over in Gozo, eco-farmers Xherri Fields will supply 200 kg of carob snacks for the first EURASHE student conference to be held on Maltese soil next spring—projected to inject €220 k into the local economy. Even the national airline is circling: KM Malta Airlines is discussing a carbon-offset partnership that would allow Knights students to fly to partner campuses with emissions balanced by tree-planting in Buskett.

Not everyone is toasting with Kinnie. University of Malta insiders privately wonder whether the upstart college—still unranked globally—will siphon away EU funds. Education Minister Clifton Grima dismissed such fears, insisting “the pie is expanding.” He pointed to a newly signed memorandum that channels 15 % of Knights’ EU research income into joint labs with the state university, focusing on AI-driven heritage conservation. “Collaboration, not competition,” Grima stressed.

Back in Sliema, Prof. Mercieca is already packing for Brussels. On the wall behind him hangs a vintage map of the Mediterranean: Malta sits dead-centre, a speck crowned by a brass compass rose. “We used to be the edge of the known world,” he said, tapping the glass. “Today we’re the crossroads.” With Knights College now wearing the EURASHE badge, that crossroads just got a lot wider—and the traffic, two-way.