The strike by senior university lecturers reflects only one aspect of their situation, which is steadily getting worse. The per-student budget for higher education has been decreasing every year, and the results are well-known: staff shortages, overcrowded classrooms, outdated laboratory equipment, a decline in the quality of both research and teaching and a flight by academics to overseas jobs. The percentage of Israeli lecturers in American universities is proportionally higher than that of any other group. The wage gap between a lecturer in Israel and one in the U.S., as well as the gaps in research spending and in the possibilities for advancement, are so large that it is hard to blame anyone who seeks opportunity in another country.
But the university strike does not deal with the main issue. Studies are already suffering from last year's disruptions, when the students struck to protest plans to raise tuition. The present strike is by the senior academic staff, and neither junior faculty nor external lecturers are participating, as they have no rights; they are paid by the hour.
Today, it is hard for a university to hire talented young people, because there are no positions available for them to fill. As a result, the brain drain overseas is increasing. There are currently 4,500 researchers working in Israel, whereas there are already some 3,000 Israeli researchers working overseas. In order to slash expenditures even further, there has been an increase in the number of lecturers employed as "free-lancers," who have no possibility of receiving tenure and are not eligible for pensions or severance pay. In some institutions, such external lecturers account for 60 percent of the staff. They are fired every year so they will not be entitled to benefits. Yet the strike does not include them.
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The solution to the problem lies not in raising salaries for the striking lecturers, who are actually the best paid, but in comprehensive reform. Even though the government appointed a committee headed by former finance minister Abraham Shochat to propose substantive changes, its recommendations heralded no such thing. The committee proposed increasing budgets for various items and raising tuition by about 70 percent in order to finance the increase, but did not propose structural changes.
Israeli universities are organized in a way that makes them hard to manage. There is no managerial flexibility, no ability to give higher salaries to those who produce more, no decentralization of authority, and it is hard to effect change. The strike does not even touch on these issues, nor does it include the poorest of all - the junior academic staff, who will also not benefit from any gains it achieves. And the fact that junior lecturers are continuing to teach reduces the strike's effectiveness, since classes are still taking place.
In order to effect a real change in academia, a unification of forces is necessary. All the parties have a common interest in better-quality higher education, research worthy of the name, flexible budgets that make it possible to reward certain individuals, and above all, a managerial structure that enables deans to improve their schools, hire lecturers, reward them and give them research funds without the hassles entailed by the current situation, in which government bureaucrats - whether via the Finance Ministry or the Council for Higher Education - control every detail of day-to-day academic life.
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