Student leaders: Don't pay tuition
University student union leaders enraged at Treasury's insistence to hike yearly tuition rates, encourage students to postpone payments in protest
Leaders of the university student unions sent a mass message to students on Tuesday asking them to hold off paying their tuition. The move was a response to the Finance Ministry's intention to increase yearly fees by more than 1,000 NIS – from 8,111 NIS ($2,280) to 9,655 NIS ($2,700) annually.
The government was meant to hold a meeting this week to discuss a 6% rebate on tuition that has been awarded to students annually since 2005, pursuant to a recommendation of the Winograd committee from that year.
During a meeting last week of the Knesset's education committee, Finance Ministry representatives reported that the rebate would not be approved for the upcoming school year.
The issue of the rebate has been on the agenda for about three months but has yet to be resolved. If an explicit decision on the issue is not reached, the rebate will automatically be cancelled and tuition will increase. Operatively, this means that students will be sent warrants requesting an additional thousand or so shekel before the school year begins.
In the meantime, students have already received warrants requesting an advance of 3,000 NIS ($800), which must be paid by students for them to register for courses.
University student leaders across Israel, among them Tel Aviv University's Gild Goldenberg and Hebrew University's Shlomo Levy, are calling on students not to pay any fees beyond the advance.
Goldenberg, the acting chairman of the Israel Student Union, said "it seems that no one has any reason to approve the rebate, or even discuss the issue, because if the issue is left off the table, tuition will increase automatically."
"Government ministers are embarrassing themselves with this issue and belittling us, citizens of the state, by not following through on agreements that have already been signed," he added.
