The Finance Ministry on Sunday agreed to return to universities most of the funds it cut from higher education spending in 2006.

The treasury will grant universities NIS 140 million of the NIS 170 million it initially cut from the 2006 budget, giving institutions of higher education the funding necessary to open the school year as planned on October 22. University presidents had warned that without the funding, the school year would not be able to start.

The funds will be given to universities pending Knesset approval of the 2007 state budget. However, the treasury also plans additional cuts of NIS 36 million to higher education in 2007.

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The decision to resume funding from the 2006 budget was made Sunday during a meeting between Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson, Education Minister Yuli Tamir, Prime Minister's Office Director General Ronen Dinar and university representatives.

The Finance Ministry has in recent years cut some billion shekels from higher education.

In the meeting, the ministry also decided to appoint a committee to draft reforms to the higher education system.

The committee will present a draft by January 3, 2007, before the deadline for transferring funds promised to the universities. The reforms were initiated after Tamir rejected a clause setting differential salaries for university lecturers.

The committee is expected to recommend solutions for the financial distress suffered by universities by mid-January. The financial representative on the committee is expected to demand a substantial raise in university tuition fees, claiming that current rates are unrealistic. Other committee members are also expected to demand greater government contributions to tuition.

Boaz Toporovsky, chairman of the students' association of Tel Aviv University, said in response that "the state is buying the heads of universities for peanuts. It has cut a billion and a half shekels, and the amount [the universities] received, which is less than 10 percent of that, is supposed to silence those who should be responsible for the future of higher education in Israel."

He said that any committee established without approval of the student organizations, and whose conclusions contradict those of the Winograd Committee for raising tuition would be "a waste of time and public money."

Nobel laureate blasts government for university budget cuts
Nobel laureate Roger D. Kornberg, an American scientist with close ties
to Israel, criticized the government on Sunday for slashing support to universities, charging that it has shaken the foundation of Israel's scientific research community.

At a ceremony at Hebrew University, where Kornberg holds an honorary doctorate and teaches for four months each year, he called the 30 percent cut in government funding for sciences since 2003 "astonishing." He warned that Israel's once-flourishing scientific establishment will lag behind other nations if the trend continues.

The "miracle" of Israeli science is the "the capacity to accomplish so much with more limited means than we have at our disposal in the States," he said. "Of course there are limitations to every such miracle. This is one that will really not go on for very much longer if it doesn't receive proper attention at the level of Israeli government."

Kornberg, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, was awarded the 2006 Nobel prize in chemistry for his studies of how cells take information from genes to produce proteins, a process that could provide insight into defeating cancer and advancing stem cell research. He was awarded the honor, along with its $1.4 million purse, 47 years after his father, Arthur Kornberg, shared the Nobel prize in medicine. The Kornbergs are the sixth father and son to earn the prestigious honor.

In his remarks, the younger Kornberg said he couldn't have done it without "the reservoir of talent" in Israel.

"These very able people, many of whom go on to do also very successful work as postdoctoral fellows here and elsewhere, have very limited opportunities to return [to Israel] - they all wish to do so," Kornberg said. In some cases, he added, "It [is] not possible to find employment in Israel."

Kornberg's wife and three children are Israeli citizens, and he spends four months each year in teaching and research in Jerusalem. Kornberg said he considers himself an "honorary citizen" and hoped his award, along with his ties to Hebrew University, would boost the struggle for more funding.

Speaking to reporters after his speech, Kornberg also had harsh words for British lecturers who voted in May to boycott Israeli academics because of the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians.

"In the first place it is appalling beyond words. It is not only wrong, but I think ... it is blatantly anti-Semitic," he said. "It's not only ill-motivated politically, but it's utterly immoral."