Academy / The Technion was forced to reject applicants for studies due to a deficit of NIS 80 million, for the first time in the institution's history * The abnormal damage to the Technion's budget poses a threat to the achievements of Israeli science
Ayelet Meiner (25) is a student at the Technion for biotechnology combined with food engineering. As part of the final project of her undergraduate studies, Meiner chose to focus on immunology (the theory of the immune system), and she researches prostate gland cancer cells. Meiner says that she is far from the average profile of the student who chooses her fields of research: with a sky-high psychometric score and matriculation. "My matriculation average was not bright", she says, "I worked very hard to be accepted into the demanding field of study". Her high motivation stems, according to her, from "the desire to invest in studies in a field with added value."
At the next academic admissions date, the Technion may not give an opportunity to students like Meiner, who mask relatively low admission scores with great motivation, and turn out to be brilliant students whose high investment by the state in funding their studies has been proven correct. The reason for this: the severe budget deficit, amounting to NIS 80 million, which the Technion ran into for the first time in its history.
"When the budgets dwindle, the number of places in the faculties decreases and the selection becomes more severe", explains the president of the Technion, Prof. Yitzhak Apluig. "Due to the deficit, we have already reduced, at the beginning of the school year, the number of students accepted for studies by about 240 compared to the 1,700 new students we accepted last year. As a result, the acceptance score for electrical engineering combined with physics, for example, soared and was similar to that of the Faculty of Medicine. The Technion thereby lost many talented students who could have become excellent engineers who will develop the hi-tech industries." The Technion's Vice President for Administration and Finance, Prof. Micha Rubinovitz, fears that "at the next admissions date we will again have to reject hundreds of candidates, if we do not succeed in convincing the Planning and Budgeting Committee (Hot) to increase its participation in the Technion's budget."
According to Rubinowitz, the deficit now reaches 9% of the annual budget, about NIS 900 million. "The deficit is due to two reasons: one, the budgeting of the university does not meet the needs of a technological university like the Technion, where more than 90% of the students study engineering and science subjects and about 65% study engineering subjects. The second reason is that the Technion finances about 700 students at its own expense that the HOT does not budget for, even though the increase was made after an agreement with the HOT chairman, Prof. Nehemiah Levzion.
The unique needs of the Technion relate to the high costs of science students. The tuition fees for all students at public universities are the same, but the cost of educating a student to the state is different. A law student, for example, does not need expensive labs like a medical student. Because of this, HOT pays the university about 11-10 thousand shekels per year for the studies of a law, business administration or social sciences student, but 29 thousand shekels for a medical student. The cost of a student in the various engineering subjects is about NIS 30, and the public funding for a chemistry or physics student is about NIS 44 per year.
However, according to the Technion, this budgeting model, established nine years ago, does not meet the actual cost of studies in the technological professions. "The cost of training a student in electronics engineering, aeronautical engineering or bio-technology is no different than the cost of training a student in chemistry," says Rubinowitz. The HTA also recognized the distortion in the budgeting method and used to increase its participation in the university budgets for students in the engineering and technology professions every year, beyond the existing budgeting model, in the section of the "balance formula".
However, this section was cut this year. "In the previous budget year, the HOT transferred approximately NIS 70 million to the Technion to compensate for the lack of budgeting for engineering students; This year, the section of the balance formula was cut to about NIS 40 million," he says
Robinovitz. "While a non-technological university can transfer funds to budget for engineering students from the fields of humanities and social sciences, the Technion does not have such budgetary freedom." According to Rubinowitz, "Such drastic cuts in one component of the budgeting system, without correcting the outdated rates, could lead to the destruction of the Technion and endanger its ability to train high quality engineers and scientists."
This is not the only cut the Technion has suffered. In the current academic year, the higher education system suffered a cut of NIS 300 million and the budgets of all universities were cut, according to their size. According to Rubinowitz, the budget of the Technion, where about 13,500 students study, was cut in this section by about NIS 30 million.
The figures for the cuts presented by the chairman of the HOT, Prof. Levzion, are slightly different. According to him, the cut in the Technion's budget amounts to NIS 73,815 million and includes two sections: the horizontal cut, amounting to NIS 55,538 million, and a NIS 18,276 cut in the balance formula. "In order to help the Technion cope with the cut in 67, we allowed it to use the amount of XNUMX million shekels from a reserve fund, which was built from the surplus budgets of the OT in previous years," says Levtzion.
The Technion is trying to deal with the lack of budgets in other ways, and according to Rubinowitz, the institution got into the current deficit after cutting 115 faculty positions and streamlining the administrative and academic units. Apluig fears the long-term consequences of the cuts on the quality of the academic staff. "In order to meet the Technion's high standards in teaching and research, it is necessary to recruit excellent new lecturers and allow them to develop in their academic path," he says. "Today, 640 lecturers teach at the Technion. The budget cuts may force us to reduce their number to 600, as it was two decades ago."
Apluig also warns that "the Technion's deficit sabotages its ability to stand at the forefront of science and technology, and the Israeli economy will be damaged by this." He is not the only one who sees a connection between the academy and the state of the Israeli economy: the president of the "Red Bint" group, Yehuda Zisafel, believes that the solution to rescuing the economy from its difficult situation lies in training another 1,500 engineers who graduate from universities in the high-tech fields every year. Before the HTA data, two years ago there were 2,434 bachelor's degree graduates in computer science and electronic engineering at universities. According to Zisapel, an addition of about ten thousand engineers "will lead to the elimination of the deficit in the balance of payments, amounting to seven billion dollars.
The engineers in the high-tech fields will create an additional 43,500 jobs in the first cycle, and 230 workers in the second cycle, thus solving unemployment."
A high-tech powerhouse is in danger * The damage to the Technion is a threat to the achievements of Israeli science
31/12/2003
Peretz LaviIn my meetings with scientists around the world, many of my colleagues ask me, to a great extent of surprise, if I can reveal to them the ingredients of the secret formula that turned a tiny country, of six million inhabitants in total, into a superpower in the field of high-tech. And they ask: "How did you manage to bring about the fact that the best high-tech giants in the world - IBM, Siemens, Intel and Microsoft - established research and development centers in Israel?" I recently encountered these questions in Australia, where I was invited as a guest of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences. "How is it," they asked me, "for us, a country of 25 million inhabitants, there are only 20 companies listed on Nasdaq, while you have more than 100?"
How did we really succeed so impressively? There are four explanations for this: the government policy that directly supported research and development for years; The contribution of the defense industries, which began to develop following the embargo on arms shipments to Israel, which was announced by French President Charles de Gaulle in; 1967 the qualitative immigration to Israel from the United States; And the fourth factor, and perhaps the most important of all - the excellent quality of scientific and technological education in the State of Israel, an education that is now in real existential danger.
Israel's higher education system in the field of technology and science, led by the Technion, has trained scientists and engineers at an excellent level, without whom the research and development system cannot exist. One of the things that set Israeli technological and scientific education apart is the emphasis on training engineers and scientists with master's and master's degrees. In comparison, for example, with the academic engineering education in Great Britain and Ireland: while the number of bachelor's degree graduates is similar in the three countries, relative to the size of the population, Israel leads by a significant gap in the training of master's and doctorate holders, most of whom are Technion graduates. And as it turned out, 85% of the entrepreneurs in the hi-tech incubators in Israel have advanced degrees. Holders of these degrees are the backbone of the Israeli hi-tech industry.
Furthermore, in a survey conducted about two years ago of the Israeli high-tech companies listed on Nasdaq, it was found that more than 80% of them the company's manager, or his deputy, were graduates of the Technion.
Unfortunately, after two years of a murderous intifada, a deepening and ongoing economic crisis and a painful cut in government appropriations for the deepening and expansion of technological education - there is now a tangible and immediate danger that the scope of the training of scientists and engineers in Israel will shrink from year to year, and as a result of this Israel's extraordinary achievements may also go down the drain.
For the first time in the Technion's history, its ability to continue training engineers and scientists of the quality required in the 21st century for the needs of the economy and the state is in doubt. The crisis is entirely due to the cutting of the participation of the Planning and Budgeting Committee (PTC) in the Technion's budget. In the last two years, the committee's participation was cut by 16%, which is more than NIS 100 million - double the cut imposed on the other universities. This is due, in part, to a historical distortion in the funding of an engineering student's studies compared to a science student. More than 20 years ago it was determined that the cost of training an engineering student would be two thirds of the cost of training a science student; It so happened that the budget of the leading institute in Israel, and among the leading in the world, in the training of engineers was fatally damaged.
And so, in a few years, instead of producing an advanced industry, which will be a technological light for the Gentiles, we may return to the days of unsophisticated industries, "Jaffa" oranges, and self-initiated jobs.
* Prof. Lavi is the Technion's vice president for foreign relations and resource development
