Universities, colleges to keep tuition fees standing
Committees of university, college heads decide against raising tuition fees, after university heads hold emergency meeting, decides to suspend academic year unless Education Ministry pledges additional resources recommended by Shochat Committee
The Committee of University Heads decided Monday against increasing university tuition fees. The Committee of College Heads has decided to follow suite, announcing it too would not be changing college tuition fees.
Unlike their fellow university heads, however, the Committee of College Heads has decided not to suspend its academic year.
Earlier Monday, the Committee of University Heads held an emergency meeting which resulted in a decision to suspend the new academic year, unless the Education Ministry pledges the universities the additional resources recommended by the Shochat Committee for reform in higher education.
The Shochat Report noted that the universities should be allotted additional funding to the amount of NIS 2.4 billion (approx. $639.7 million), over a five-year period, as means of replenishing a deficit caused by several years of budgetary cutback, which have rendered the universities depleted.
The committee is scheduled to hold a second meeting later Monday with members of the Finance Ministry and the Council for Higher Education, in a last-ditch effort to avoid a strike.
Professor Menachem Magidor, chairman of the Committee of University Heads, called on the government "to come to its senses and prevent the damage and suffering a strike will inflict on the students and the public."
The academic year is scheduled to open on November 2. The universities, however, believe that the students would be the first to suffer from the lack of funds, as many courses have been cut.
"It's ridiculous," Noam Fiada, a third year political science major in Tel Aviv University, told Ynet.
"Classes are closing, and the one remaining are packed in a way that's ineffective… you go into the library and they can't give you the books you need because they have three instead of 50. It's like they're out to shut down any course that isn’t 'profitable.'"
