Last update - 01:43 07/01/2008
Estimated cost of professors strike - NIS 3.25 billion
By Tamara Traubmann
The monetary damage to universities from the lost academic year has been estimated at NIS 3.25 billion, according to a preliminary calculation by the Council for Higher Education's planning and budgeting committee.
A document that committee officials submitted to the Knesset Education Committee said that universities would not be able to incur such a burden without supplemental funding, and that the Council for Higher Education's committee, which disburses budgets to higher education institutions, "does not have the resources to finance these additional costs."
The document also warned of potential damage to research as a result of reduced faculty attendance at overseas conferences next summer.
"We are at a terrible breaking point," Prof. Menachem Magidor, president of Hebrew University, told the lawmakers yesterday.
University presidents say this coming Sunday, January 13, is the deadline for ending the strike and still managing, with difficulty, to make up the lost semester.
Beyond the universities' lost income, Magidor warned that the economy stands to lose another NIS 3 billion because of the delayed entry to the work force of students supposed to graduate this year.