Senior lecturers at colleges and universities across the country will embark on the second day of their strike on Wednesday, with their demand that universities not change the employment system for senior faculty, as the Shochat Committee on higher education reform is recommending.

The committee wants institutions of higher education to provide grants to a small number of top scientists, according to proposals obtained by Haaretz. The additional remuneration, which would be limited to a few years, is designed to attract leading academics often lured by better-paying jobs abroad.

However, the coordinating committee of academic faculty organizations says changes in wage agreements should be a matter for negotiations.

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The lecturers are joining a student strike that began a week ago to call for a restoration of NIS 1.2 billion in budget cuts and call for lower tuition. Thousands of students rallied Tuesday near the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem, although only about 300 had been expected. They shouted slogans such as 'No education, no state,' and booed every time speakers mentioned the chairman of the education committee, Avraham Shochat.

The national student union said Tuesday that the strike would continue for at least another month or two, while other student groups said the protest would continue until their demands were met.

'My struggle is social,' Liz Ohayon, a student at Sapir College in Sderot, said Tuesday. 'The state has an interest in perpetuating poverty. High tuition costs are a way of perpetuating gaps. It reflects ethnic and social discrimination.'

The Shochat Committee is proposing a system of student loans and grants while apparently planning to recommend a tuition hike - a move Ohayon rejects.

'What difference will a loan make?' she asked. 'We'll have to pay it back with interest.' Ohayon said she was offered a loan, but decided to pay for her tuition by working nights instead.

'Higher education is a civil right that should be provided for free,' said Yaron Ezrahi, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Liora Meridor, who heads the Shochat Committee's tuition subcommittee, said the panel had yet to formulate recommendations on the raising of tuition.

'The opinion of the students is important to me, and the door of the subcommittee is still open to them,' she said.