The universities will pay the price

This Sunday the government is set to approve the Shohat Committee report on higher education. The report contains two interdependent elements, proposed by the Finance Ministry as a "package deal." One is restoring funding to the higher education system that had been cut, about 20 percent of its allocation, and the other is raising tuition.

By conditioning of one aspect on the other, it seems as if the treasury has predetermined that there is no way to implement the report, and the budget cut will remain in force. There is also a fair amount of pretense in this interdependence, because institutions of higher education are not authorized to determine tuition rates; the government is. So it is not fair for these institutions to be the ones to pay the price.

Israel feels a strong public obligation toward its younger generation, most of whom serve in the Israel Defense Forces or do national service. Accordingly, tuition levels are determined on the recommendation of public committees. For example, the Katsav Committee, the Navon Committee and the Winograd Committee presented the government with recommendations on tuition rates and the government adopted them. Now, for the first time in the history of Israeli higher education, the government is set to condition a funding increase to higher education - as per the demand of the treasury's budgets department - on a tuition rise, which goes against tradition and the good judgment that has motivated governments so far. This conditioning imposes sanctions precisely on the system that "lays the golden eggs" for society and the economy.

In the 1970s and 1980s, investment in research was responsible for 41 percent of the increase in gross national product, and investment in higher education, 29 percent. People with higher education can more easily get a job; only one-eighth of unemployed people are college graduates. Higher education now faces the danger that its missing funding will be held hostage, because if the current government - like its predecessors - does not manage to raise tuition, it will be impossible to bring back the funding whose importance has been acknowledged by the Shohat Committee.

What is happening in other countries in this respect? First of all, in no other country are young people required to do extended national service as in Israel. Second, the world is increasingly aware that in this global age the ability to influence fluctuations of capital and business is limited, but that governments can affect the quality of their human capital by encouraging higher education and research.

Finland, for example, has extricated itself from serious economic straits and has begun to enjoy rapid economic growth thanks to particularly high investment in research and development. Britain, Germany, China and Japan increased their investment in all aspects of higher education by 10 to 25 percent, and the European Union has set huge growth objectives for higher education. In Israel, meanwhile, the budget has been cut by about 20 percent, and the United States snaps up the finest young Israeli talents.

Elite universities all over the world offer positions to talented young people who have completed their doctorates with distinction, and many young Israelis not only become researchers at the best institutions, but also enjoy prestige among the world's leading scholars in the sciences, humanities, economics and law.

Will we know how to ensure the scientific achievements, cultural richness and economic prosperity of Israeli society by bringing back these talented young people? Will the vision of the President's Conference, which saluted the intellectual achievements of Israeli society, come true via a government decision to restore funding to higher education? Or will the ideas of the President's Conference become a farce? Come Sunday, the government will decide.

The writer is a professor at the Tel Aviv University School of Education and the author of "Academia in a changing environment: Higher education policy in Israel 1952-2004."