Last update - 00:00 06/05/2007
Back to class
By Haaretz Editorial
The students have one more day to get themselves out of the corner into which they have painted themselves.
The heads of the country's universities have extended their ultimatum until tomorrow, but after that any student who does not return to classes risks losing the whole semester. The universities have agreed to extend the semester by two weeks, and have even promised to help students make up the material they lost due to the strike.
Time is growing short. We have reached the moment of truth. If the strike does not end today, the entire semester is at risk and the damage to the students and the economy will be high.
However, the student leaders have their own agenda, an extreme agenda employing irrelevant, revolutionary slogans against "capitalism," "privatization" and "capitalists" (what's the connection?), and also, of course, against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Education Minister Yuli Tamir and the head of the committee on higher education reform, Avraham Shochat. They are glory-seekers. They want to chalk up a victory over a weak government. What about the students who will lose a semester, what about the state of the universities? That is less important to them.
They are so busy dealing with the issue of tuition costs that the two problems the Shochat Committee was charged with solving are all but forgotten: the serious budget crisis of the universities and the flight of promising young faculty members abroad.
The committee is trying to solve the budget crisis. It recommends raising tuition fees while extending subsidized loans to all that can be repaid over many years, after graduation. The number of grants and scholarships will also be increased. In addition, the state has pledged to add to university budgets if tuition fees rise.
But the students want to destroy the Shochat Committee and reduce tuition fees. They do not care that they are already getting an enormously subsidized product from the state. Tuition fees cover only 16 percent of the universities' budgets, while the state funds 70 percent. The remaining 14 percent come from donations and income earned by the universities.
Students also do not care that many, wealthier Western countries are raising their previously negligible tuition fees, having concluded that there is a limit to subsidization. After all, students are getting an education and a profession that will serve them their whole lives, and all the studies show that the return on education (in salary and professional advancement) is very high.
Thus, the students' strike is unjustified. It is also immoral. It is immoral to demand that taxpayers direct more resources to university students. Ahead of them in line are society's truly weak: the sick, the disabled, the unemployed and the elderly.
There are many students who are prepared to accept the government's compromise, which would return the students to class tomorrow.