Since the issue of the plight of higher education in Israel has been brought up for discussion, thanks to the words of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry immediately after receiving the prize, many ministers have promised to help. On Tuesday, receptions were held for Prof. Avraham Hershko and Aharon Chachanover at the Prime Minister's Office, the Knesset and the President's Office
At a joint meeting of the Knesset's science and education committees, chaired by the chairman of the education committee, Mali Polishuk-Bloch, Education Minister Limor Livnat promised to fight the trend of further cuts in higher education and said that it was good that the issue was put on the agenda, even if it was following a decision by an external party such as Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Hershko accepted that the higher education institutions are in deficit, not because they were mismanaged, but because of the cuts upon cuts imposed on them, which do not allow for any realistic planning.
His colleague for the prize, Prof. Aharon Chachanover, retired before the participants of the yeshiva, including the current Minister of Science Ilan Shelgi, the designated Minister Viktor Brailovsky, and the Minister of Education Limor Livnat all the patients of higher education. In addition to the cuts, Chechenover referred to all kinds of populist decisions such as the decision to cancel the requirement for psychometric tests that left the universities facing a broken trough and neutralized their ability to select the best candidates; Another issue he addressed was the idea of allowing the granting of research degrees to colleges: "I have nothing against colleges, I even lecture at several colleges, but opening a physics laboratory at Shaar HaNegev College will harm the existing faculties in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and the Technion. Chechenover also accepted a series of decisions that he says interfere with academic freedom, such as the recommendations of the Maltz Committee to change the structure of higher education in Israel. "If someone were to criticize us, they would dismiss the research on the grounds that it is impractical. Only thanks to academic freedom was Prof. Hershko able to hire doctoral students and we worked for many years on research in a basic field." According to him, today there are no other fields in which a breakthrough can be made, so it is also necessary to invest in equipment and pay the laboratory personnel.
Intermediate: Do not touch animals
Prof. Chechenover also included the subject of animal experiments in the package of decisions plaguing higher education: "Here it is no longer a matter of money. This morning we were at the Prime Minister's office, and we saw how difficult it is to enter the building and how many gates one has to pass through. Believe me, the laboratory where the animals are with us is even more secure, because otherwise people will come and take the animals from us or even kill them and we don't exactly need them to take a transgenic mouse, which cost tens of thousands of dollars, and give it to dogs.
"The chance of winning a Nobel Prize is smaller than the chance of being struck by lightning," said Chahanover, which provoked the audience's laughter and MK Michael Eitan's comment, "What kind of lightning?" "But we must cultivate Prof. Hershko and Prof. Chachanover warned against the elimination of higher education in Israel if the doctoral students' stipend, which at most does not exceed NIS 5,000 per month, is abolished. The president of the Technion, Prof. Yitzhak Apluig, said that even so, it is very difficult to attract back to Israel scientists who are in post-doctorate and who are faced with tempting offers from good universities, and budgets are needed to build laboratories for them and pay employees.
