Universities will not open for new academic year, MKs told

Schools demand NIS 480m. be returned to budgets.

By SHELLY PAZ
University 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
University 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
The universities will not open the new academic year as scheduled on November 2, due to disputes with the Finance Ministry, the Knesset Education Committee was told on Sunday. Administrators and staff, both senior and junior, support a refusal to continue with business as usual. Although tuition will not rise in 2008-2009, students also support the idea. "We have done all we could in order to survive; we have cut flesh and fat, we have reached the bone," Prof. Rivka Carmi, president of Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, told an emergency session of the Education Committee on Sunday. "After seven years of continual cutbacks we have reduced the number of courses, we have raised the number of students in classes and we have banished an entire generation of lecturers overseas. We're not issuing a threat not to open the academic year, we simply can't open the year," Carmi told the MKs. Approximately 700 senior and junior staff have been fired since 2001 from the state's universities and colleges, the legislators were told. "It's as if an entire university was eliminated, and it's time to bring it back. Academic staff who have decided to stay in the country should be rewarded," said Prof. Asher Yahalom from the Ariel University Center of Samaria. NIS 480 million of the NIS 2.4 billion that has been cut from the annual higher education budget since 2001 must be approved by the Treasury and channeled to universities if the academic year is to opened as scheduled, the Planning and Budgeting Committee at the Council for Higher Education told the Finance Ministry representative. "All the universities have budget deficits and there is not even one governing council of one university that will allow it to open the academic year," Carmi said. "The Finance Ministry is taking hostages along this way," she added, referring to the Treasury demand that the improvements in the conditions of employment for senior and junior staff, which have already been approved by the ministry, would come at the expense of the funds now being demanded by the universities. Not opening the academic year would be disastrous, said Steven Stav, chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee. "It would be devastating to the economy and should be the last resort. Against the background of the world economic crisis, we have an opportunity to bring back brilliant minds who have left us. Some of them are willing to come back and this is a remarkable opportunity for Israeli academia," Stav said. National Student Union chairman Boaz Toporovsky said, "We are not glad not to open the academic year, but we understand that there is no choice. Higher education is collapsing. Many students have already forgone higher education due to economic difficulties." The Treasury representative at the meeting said the Planning and Budgeting Committee had raised its original demands by NIS 100m., without the backing of the Finance Ministry. The official was filling in for the ministry's budget supervisor, Ram Belnikov, who is on vacation abroad until after the holidays. Education Committee Chairman Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) criticized Belnikov's absence at such a critical time and said the future of the entire economy was at risk. "Israel has lost 40 percent of its senior and junior [higher educational] staff, a real solution must be searched for day in and day out until November 2. If the government, even the temporary government, will not do it, we [the Labor Party] will have to demand it via the coalition agreement," he said.