Bold on brainpower

Our leaders must make choices that will allow Israel to sharpen its intellectual qualitative edge.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Hebrew university 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Hebrew university 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
A threatened strike this Sunday at Israeli universities which would have delayed the start of the winter semester was averted thanks to the belated intervention of the prime minister, who largely sided with the university presidents and the education minister over the finance minister and Treasury officials. Ehud Olmert ordered the Treasury to release NIS 465 million in supplementary funding to the universities. He even promised another NIS 50 million for "development." Education Minister Yuli Tamir was ecstatic: Finally, there will be money to hire young faculty, invest in research, improve infrastructure and subsidize tuition. This is all good news. Of course, had the state not cut higher education funding six years in a row and not done away with the municipal tax abatements once enjoyed by universities, they might have had a bit more cash on hand. A new complicating factor is that university financial portfolios have lost hundreds of millions of shekels in value due to the global economic downturn. Moreover, no one yet knows how the recession will affect donations from "friends" organizations abroad. The Technion, for instance, raises some $80 million a year that way. MUCH NOW depends on how the Treasury implements the premier's order. Will the universities be able to spend the promised monies at their discretion - on everything from salvaging their humanities departments to paying for pensions - or will their expenditures be micro-managed? The Finance Ministry had been insisting that any additional monies be funneled to programs promoting the Shochat Committee's vision. That's the body tasked with rethinking how Israeli higher education should be funded and administered. As part of its package of recommendations, Shochat called for investing NIS 2.4 billion in the universities over five years. The aim? To reverse the country's dramatic brain-drain, which has seen too many of our best and brightest emigrating because they can't find work in their fields here. Shochat also advocated investing in young scholars. Universities want to do that, but they're under internal pressure to support established academics. They are also saddled with huge personnel and pension costs - the annual budget bite at Hebrew University, for example, is 64 percent. Shochat advocated a merit-based pay-scale, but how are universities to reconcile that with their obligations to the tenured? It recommended that students pay more: At Hebrew University, for instance, tuition fees comprise only 11 percent of income. The government provides another 43%. Yet how much more can students realistically afford? Many are in their early 20s when they reach campus, having done army or national service, and already work part-time. Means-testing might be an equitable way to determine how much individual students should pay. Some private universities in the US have eliminated tuition altogether for students whose family income falls below a certain level. WE'RE GRATIFIED that the threat of a university strike appears to have been removed. And we urge all sides to work together in good faith to implement the premier's instructions. But let's not lose sight of the bigger challenge. If we do not invest more and better in education - from elementary school through post-graduate studies - our pool of educational talent will simply dry up. It's already beginning to happen. We spend roughly 6.9% of our GDP in education - on a par with the US and UK - yet a recent OECD survey suggested we're not getting a sufficient return on this investment. Israeli teachers are underpaid, our classrooms are overcrowded and our students no longer excel in math and science. Israel's economy is a technologically advanced one. Even those who run our farms, dairies and agricultural enterprises use state-of-the-art equipment. When people think of Israeli industry, they think of our hi-tech exports in such fields as aviation, communications, software design, medical electronics, fiber optics and pharmaceuticals. All this takes brainpower. We need to press our politicians, civil servants and university presidents - as well as the heads of all teachers unions - to make the courageous strategic choices that will allow Israel to sharpen its intellectual qualitative edge for the 21st century. When it comes to nurturing our nation's brainpower, our ambition must exceed the Shochat recommendations.