IV. A Change in Government Policy
In 2004, an important change finally occurred in government policy. The Ministry of Finance was persuaded to stop cutting the higher education budget and to start rebuilding it through a Five-Year Plan, which had been discontinued in 2002. One must not be misled by the grand terminology. The Five-Year Plan was to restore but a part of what had been cut, and while some money was added to the higher education budget, across the board cuts continued. Most of the additional resources were allocated for recovery plans and budgeted pension costs. Furthermore, as a quid pro quo for the plan, the Ministry of Finance extracted from the universities concessions which gave the Ministry further access into the universities’ inner workings.
The Five-Year Plan was supposed to reinstate about NIS 500 million to the higher education system's budget by 2007/2008. Of this sum, Tel Aviv University is expected to receive NIS 75 million in 2007/2008 (it received NIS 34 million in 2003/2004, NIS 42 million in 2004/2005, NIS 48 million in 2005/2006 and NIS 52 million in 2006/2007.)
The implementation of the Five-Year Plan was contingent upon the approval of the Treasury to the recovery plans and the achievement of a balanced budget at each institution. The primary points of the recovery plan of Tel Aviv University are as follows:
- Stabilizing the number of senior academic faculty at approximately 1,000
- Reducing administrative and technical staff to 1,400
- Decreasing non-senior teaching staff by 18% (junior faculty, external lecturers and teaching assistants)
- Reducing the number of students enrolled beyond the quota determined by the Planning and Budgeting Committee
- Increasing income through donations
- Increasing income through non-budgeted study programs
- Fully balancing the budget by 2007/2008
Needless to say, the Five-Year Plan does not provide a fundamental solution to the budgetary problem created by the capping of growth and the budget cuts of the years 2001 through 2006 and does not address such other fundamental issues as the collapse of the system of regulation, budgeting and planning that had been put together in the late 1970s, the problem of budgetary pensions and the challenges posed by the globalization of scientific research and higher education.
Only at the end of 2006 did Ehud Olmert's government decide, through the Ministers of Education and Finance, to cope seriously with these issues by forming the Shochat Commission for Examining the Israeli Higher Education System, headed by former Minister of Finance Avraham (Beiga) Shochat. It soon transpired that the commission is conducting its work on the assumption that in order to restore the higher education budgets to the level of 2000, two interrelated measures will have to be undertaken: raising the government's allocation and raising (and/or restructuring) tuition. This set the student unions against the commission. They were joined (but not fully) by the faculty unions who opposed the apparent intention to introduce changes in the current patterns of employment.
It is presently difficult to know whether the Olmert government will have the stamina to support measures and decisions that will lead to a confrontation with more than 200,000 students (a conflict with the faculty unions is not inevitable). In any event, it is important to point out that it would be a tragedy (at least from the universities' point of view) if the window of opportunity opened by the formation of the Shochat Commission were to be closed without any change having taken place. Without a significant increase in the higher education and research budget, and without rectification of the systemic disruptions of the recent decade, the Israeli university system has no prospect of competing in the global arena and ensuring Israel's position in today's knowledge economy.
Specifically for TAU, the balancing of the budget waiting around the corner is a necessary but insufficient condition. The NIS 200 million envisaged as an addition to its budget should the Shochat Commission complete its work and should the government implement its recommendations, would almost reinstate TAU's resources to the 2000 level. The addition would enable TAU to rejuvenate the faculty and increase its size to over 1,000, and to invest in libraries and new equipment, but would still fall short of the resources and standards of the University of Michigan or the E.T.H. in Zurich. Without additional resources, any major progress would be difficult to achieve.
