Tel Aviv University head: Government sinned against higher education
'Twenty-five percent of the higher education's budget has been cut when the system itself continued to grow,' Prof. Zvi Galil says, ' we have reached the point where it is hard to fix the damage that has already been done'
"In the past few years the government of Israel has committed a national sin against higher education," Tel Aviv University President Prof. Zvi Galil said Thursday.
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"I really think there s a problem," Galil said at a conference sponsored by The Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, the Council for Higher Education and the university's School of Education. "Twenty-five percent of the higher education's budget has been cut when the system itself continued to grow; this was the crime committed against it.
"We have reached the point where it is hard to fix the damage that has already been done," he said.
Two weeks ago Galil's deputy, Hagit Messer-Yaron voiced a similar warning, saying "the higher education institutions in Israel are facing grave risks in light of the severe budget cuts in recent years.
"One of the dangers is that the pressure to raise additional funds will hurt the public's interest with regards to the commercialization of technologies while exposing intellectual property to the powers of the market," she said.
During a recent Knesset hearing on brain drain - the emigration of Israeli academic talents - head of the education portfolio at the Treasury's Budget Division, Ricki Herman, said the budget was not changed due to the lecturers' refusal to discuss the implementation of the recommendations of the Shochat Committee on Reform in Higher Education.
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