This is according to a data collection from a survey of activities in teaching and R&D of senior academic staff in universities, published by the CBS • A senior academic staff member guides an average of 5.8 students towards advanced degrees. * About 26 percent of the senior staff are women
A survey on teaching and research activities was conducted in the academic year XNUMX, among a representative sample of the senior academic staff at the seven universities (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Technion, Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University, Haifa University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Weizmann Institute of Science). A publication containing detailed findings from the survey will be published soon.
In 3,800, there were approximately 35 senior academic faculty members in universities, approximately 27 percent of whom were at the rank of full professor, approximately 34 percent at the rank of associate professor and the rest at the rank of senior lecturer or lecturer. The distribution of the senior academic staff according to science fields: about 23 percent - mathematics and natural sciences, about 17 percent - humanities, about 13 percent - social sciences and about XNUMX percent - engineering and architecture and the rest were employed in medicine, law and agriculture.
Working hours and activities
The findings of the survey show that the members of the senior academic staff work an average of 54.4 hours per week. Average working hours per week in the various fields of science ranges from 56.6 hours in biological sciences to 47 hours in auxiliary medical professions. For comparison, the average working hours per week of academic professionals is 39.2 hours (according to the 2009 workforce survey).
About half of their time (47 percent) the senior staff devote to research and development - 25.4 hours on average per week. The additional activities include: 11.6 hours for teaching and activities related to teaching (about 21 percent), they devote an average of 9.6 hours per week (about 18 percent) to guiding students towards their second and third degrees. For other activities they devote 7.9 hours per week on average.
Differences were found in the number of weekly hours dedicated by senior faculty members to research and development in the various fields of science. The highest number of hours is found in the field of mathematics and natural sciences and humanities - 26.9 hours and the lowest in the field of medicine - 20 hours.
Types of research
About 68 percent of the total time devoted to research and development is devoted to basic research, 25 percent to applied research and 7 percent to development. Differences were found between the scientific fields in the division between the types of research. Basic research constitutes about 78 percent of the research in the humanities, about 76 percent of the research in mathematics and natural sciences, about 67 percent in the social sciences, about 62 percent in law, about 58 percent in agriculture, about 54 percent in medicine, and about 46 percent in engineering and architecture .
Tutoring students for advanced degrees
A senior faculty member guides an average of 5.8 students toward advanced degrees - 2.9 students toward a master's degree, 2.6 students toward a third degree, and 0.4 postdoctoral students - each student is guided an average of 1.6 hours a week. A low number of guided students is found in law (3.9 students), mathematics and natural sciences (5.5 students). A relatively high number of guided students is found in agriculture (6.9 students), medicine and social sciences (6.3 guided students in each field).
background data
About 26 percent of the faculty members are women - their relative share increases with the decrease in rank and they make up about half of the lecturers. Nevertheless, there are fields of science in which their share among lecturers is relatively low: engineering and architecture - about 23 percent, agriculture about 25 percent, law about 30 percent, mathematics and natural sciences about 42 percent. In the other scientific fields, the relative share of women among the lecturers is relatively high: humanities 55 percent, social sciences about 61 percent and medicine about 63 percent. The relatively high proportion of women among faculty at the rank of lecturer indicates that an increase in the relative proportion of women is expected even in the more senior ranks.
The median age of the senior academic staff is 53.5 and is relatively low in law and relatively high in the humanities. Half of the holders of the rank of full professor are over 61 years old and in the humanities over 62 years old. Holders of the title of full professor in agriculture and law are relatively young. It should be noted that during a press conference held yesterday as part of the Nano Israel conference, Prof. Uri Sivan of the Technion said that in the coming years many faculty members are going to retire and there is no pool of good replacements due to the collapse of the entire education system from elementary to higher education.
About 67 percent of the senior staff have completed their third degree studies (Ph.D) in Israel. The share of these among the lecturers is higher than among the professors. The scientific fields in which a high percentage of PhD graduates in Israel are: agriculture (about 89 percent), biological sciences (about 83 percent) and medicine (about 81 percent).
36 תגובות
Gali, you really could do a better job than some of the people who manage the policy here. 🙂
I really hope that the new plan will get us back on track, although I have quite a few doubts. We have much more acute problems in primary (and even before) and post-primary education, and in my opinion the problems there need to be solved before we can deal with the problems of the higher education system. The return (and the readers will forgive me for the economic jargon) to the state and to the individual on primary and elementary education is much higher than the return on higher education, and if we manage to align at these stages, the contribution to higher education will be tens of thousands more than any reform in higher education.
Nevertheless, I am still optimistic. We will see about that.
Jesus, I see that I have a future as a policy maker... 🙂
I surfed to the address you gave and realized that only institutions can contact the readers' votes.
I'll tell you what the problem is. And the readers will forgive me... when the doctors and researchers do not manage to get some time to work in Israel and continue to publish articles in international journals, then job offers come from abroad, usually the USA. The thinking of the Israeli researchers is this, and I am speaking for Israeli researchers who are not writing this response now: I will go to the USA because there is the center of my field, there it is close to the plate and they don't want me here anyway. It's tempting because suddenly you are valued in the US at a good university and here they give you excuses. The assessment is for some reason becoming very important. It's hard to live with a lack of appreciation, you suddenly get deeply depressed. And when the evaluation comes from a good university in the USA, it for some reason overcomes Zionist considerations. I really apologize. Because in Israel you feel somehow humiliated. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't been through it - because going through it is hell. It's not about money, really not, money is not interesting at all! Researchers don't go after the money, they go after the research and evaluation. It is clear that if there is money there is comfort. But when there is a lack of appreciation it is hard to live with it. You feel like a janitor at school - earning less than him, barely. It's just a matter of evaluating the research you do.
And you can go to an ivy league university in the US, jump straight to the top, and here even in college you won't be looked at. And that's exactly how it is. Then suddenly Israel builds a cultural center in Ariel and I say to myself, oh well, if they build a cultural center there and pour money there instead of building a center of excellence here, as you called it, then you can really go there. But on the other hand, if there really are centers of excellence here and they are really being built, then maybe there is hope.
From Jesus I tried to convey to you here in the response the feelings of the researchers who are about to leave the country or who have already left the country. So that they understand how much they are a national asset to the State of Israel and that science is a national asset to the State of Israel.
That is why it is important to invest in these researchers because they constitute the true national strength of the State of Israel.
Gali - It's interesting that you talk about elite research institutes in universities, because that's exactly Trachtenberg's plan, only in MLA they call this plan "centers of excellence". More details can be found here: http://www.che.org.il/template/default.aspx?PageId=471
The program is supposed to start already this year.
Benthos!
So Micho works at the Higher Education Council. How do you know Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg, right? I met him a year ago at the president's conference in Jerusalem and talked to him. I told him that the situation in higher education is not good and he gave me his card and told me that I would not worry and that there is a recovery plan and that in three years the situation will change. It's been a year since I talked to him.
In today's situation, Israel does not have much to offer scientists and researchers who have reached some sort of research status. In such a situation, they immediately come out to the USA, for example. As soon as there are no standards in the country, the researchers say goodbye and leave. I don't understand policy making, but let's say I would understand it... So I would think that the first thing that should be done is this: build an elite research institute in universities that will attract researchers so that they don't run away. And then this research institute would also attract Jewish researchers who would not have even thought of coming to Israel if such an institute had not been established here. And little by little Israel would become the world center specializing in this particular field of research in which the institute specializes.
Arya: Indeed.
Gali - Micho said in response 4 that he works at the Higher Education Council.
The humanities are another problem, but the money-guzzling faculties, the fact that the kibbutz agreements connected them to faculties such as medicine, business administration, computer engineering, and the like, is the sick evil of academia in Israel.
from whom
I see that you are really knowledgeable about the state of affairs in the academy and a real expert in the field.
I currently do not belong to the Israeli Academy. So you surely know better than me. So I assume the data you provided is correct. I'm just speaking from my experience and what I've heard.
I am doing research with a group from the USA and this is what I know at the moment.
As for the ultra-Orthodox, I am against the Abrach law, and it is a shame that Yuval Steinitz approved it. Yuval Steinitz studied with me at the Cohen Institute for several years and I also saw him at an event at the institute two years ago. He is a very good lecturer. He has changed since then if he is really the one who approved the law of the shepherds. It doesn't suit him.
The ultra-Orthodox should not be given even if we are drowned in money, work is a value in itself and avoiding it by preventing education (core) from the younger generation is a crime against these young people, because it enslaves them to the rabbis for a continued life of poverty. Those who want to work and keep the religious mitzvah, whether light or heavy, should do so, they must be weaned from this ideology. No one is ready for the continued division into the classes of masters (the ultra-orthodox) and servants (everyone else).
For decades the universities have been threatening that there will be a brain drain and a collapse of higher education in the country. It is not happening, nor will it happen.
It doesn't matter what the salary will be in Israel - there will always be an institution abroad that will offer more to those who excel. There is no end to it. (Those who do not excel even today have no offers abroad.)
Right now our financial situation is excellent and we can give more to everyone, including higher education. Including for health, including for education and including for the ultra-Orthodox, and on occasion also to reduce the state's debts.
All these systems: education, health, higher education suffer from the same problem. They have very high budgets, only a small part of which really goes to their purpose. The rest is wasted on pensions, inspectors, school rabbis, rabbis at the expense of work and all kinds of corruption.
evil:
I really do not know. I don't know why they are afraid to confront this issue, and why the Planning and Budgeting Committee is willing to pour so much money on this story for almost no return. It is true that those who are taken in today will no longer receive a pension as in the past, and that the institutions have finally switched to the accumulated pension system, but the "peak" is still ahead of us, and the estimates are that it will only start to decrease around 2020.
Gali: To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of the Weizmann Institute, in all institutions of higher education (even the Hebrew University, the Technion, and the Tel Aviv University), the state's participation reaches at least 40%-45% of the total revenue, while in most institutions, and especially in the budgeted colleges, but also in some universities , the state budgets in much higher percentages (over 50%). The rest of the income is from donations, investments, intelligence, property sales and in some cases, from royalties on inventions and patents.
The academy has two major problems today:
1) The decline in the value of humanities and cultural studies and the like. Minister of Culture (!) Limor Livnat defends the Culture Hall (!) in Ariel. So the government (probably with the encouragement of donors to the place) invested a fortune in the construction of a grandiose cultural hall in the city of Ariel to annoy the whole world, and the cultural studies departments in universities are collapsing. In universities, humanities departments are unified because there is no faculty and no students. The faculty simply retire and there is no one to replace them. Those who need to replace them are doctors who have completed post-docs and have enough publications. But the problem is that there are no standards to get such doctors. So these doctors leave for universities abroad. Tell me, will they go to work at the Culture Hall in Ariel? No. So they go to work in the eastern US.
2) The Israeli academy is financed mainly from donations and grants. It is not the IDF or the Israeli arms industry that money is pouring into them. This is an academy. So as soon as you enter the academy you have to work as a beggar collecting alms. And I can tell you from experience: after my doctorate, I collected donations for five years at the academy - I specialized in collecting donations and asking for grants. And suddenly you discover after five years of post-doctorate that you are an expert in a new field: how to get scholarships. It's actually being a postdoctoral fellow. It is less to specialize in a certain field and to be an expert in creating experimental knowledge in nanotechnology (one of the postdoctorates I did).
And these two problems that I pointed out actually reflect the order of priorities in the State of Israel.
And I agree with Gali, even with a budget increase, I think there are many layers in the structure of the academy that allow various officials to control who is accepted where and based on what, so even if the money is originally budgeted - unless there is a list of _mandatory_ criteria for university admissions committees, the situation will not improve much. And Mishu - regarding the pension - is XNUMX percent right. Why don't the finance guys get into the thick of it like they did with the local government authorities and the recovery plans?
Only 26 percent women?!?! Doesn't this bother anyone?
Jesus
The bottom line is: I'm not interested in all the talk. The academy will either get a budget or not - I don't understand it and I've heard these stories a thousand times. Only concrete suggestions interest me. And this is what I say to anyone who is thinking about an academic career, to check: is there really a concrete offer before he thinks in the direction of an academic career. If there is no concrete proposal, it is a waste of his time and that he will not invest in the direction. Because all the promises and talk about tomorrow Bibi budgeting for the academy and tomorrow Steinitz will pour in money and here... here... money is given... it's all promises and talk. Because they can pour in a lot of money, but the offers will not come. That's why it's all talk.
Gali Weinstein:
You are invited abroad, so go
jelly:
A. The budget additions are starting this year, when until 6, i.e. another two years, the system should receive most of the resources, so no one is telling you to wait XNUMX years.
B. The fact that you (or the other members of the academic staff) are not interested in the damage that the pensions and salary agreements cause to the entire system - is the heart of the problem. When an institution like the Hebrew University spends half a billion shekels a year, which is about 30% of its total budget, on paying pensions to faculty members who retired decades ago (and this is not a provision for pensions, but paychecks for all intents and purposes), and this amount only keeps increasing year by year, it is clear that there is no Money to staff standards or open new standards, and that's why you and your friends are "starving". This is true not only for the senior faculty committees in universities, that all they are interested in is their salary and not the financial situation of the institution where they work, but the public sector in general, with an emphasis on companies such as the electricity company and similar. After all, if it was a business company, the management would have sent these employees home a long time ago, or they would have suffered pay cuts. But because it is an institution that is budgeted by the state, then it is forbidden to touch their salary or pension. And what is most absurd, is that the students, who are the ones who are hurt the most by this whole story, are still backing the senior academic staff.
It's roughly like asking Stanley Fisher and the Bank of Israel to manage Israel's monetary policy without having the possibility to control the interest rate and/or the exchange rate.
In the meantime we are offered options abroad. Really, and really offer. So why wait 6 years and starve? In the meantime, Bibi Netanyahu gives budgets to the ultra-Orthodox with all kinds of laws. I need to give an answer to doctors who want to be accepted as academic staff. You know what, not as an academic staff, but in another capacity. There are intermediate positions of research or teaching in academia and academic institutions and various research institutions and foundations in Israel - not necessarily academic staff, there are all kinds of possibilities for doctors and scientists in Israel in various institutions, but it is impossible to be accepted here because there are no standards for anything. There is absolutely nothing here. And abroad they receive offers - they see your resume and tell you to come. So what would you say to the Israeli doctors? Will you starve here just because you are promised that in 6 years the situation will change? It's ridiculous. Really it's ridiculous. Do you understand how ridiculous this is? It's just dumb.
What interests me are the pensions and all kinds of salary agreements in universities and other places. I'm interested in me and him and her and they won't starve. So we are going to look outside.
jelly,
Until today this was indeed the case - in that you are right. The main problem today, is that a large part of the budgets in the universities is automatically encumbered to fund the budgetary pension still used in some universities, and to problematic salary agreements with the treasury, which the managements of the institutions have almost no way to deal with. This harms the ability to absorb new faculty members, and does not even allow universities to invest in curricula and teaching and research infrastructures.
However, in the next 6 years, the resources of the higher education system are expected to increase by about 30% from 7 billion NIS to about 9 billion in the budgeting base, and the plan is to enable a wide absorption of academic staff members. Believing in the new plan requires a great deal of optimism (if not naivety), but if the plan is not given a chance in advance, it has no chance of succeeding. Defeatism won't help anyway.
to him,
I think that those who want to pursue an academic career or academic teaching, if they receive an offer for a position in the US, they should take it if all the sorrow of leaving the country. Because in Israel today it is almost impossible to get into the academy as a faculty member, and also to teach as a teacher from abroad in any academic institution in Israel you need connections and luck.
In short, it is an almost impossible task to enter an academy in Israel. Therefore, it is a shame to develop expectations in this direction.
Therefore, I agree with the words of the Nobel Prize winner Andrey Geim regarding the internationalization of science.
religious Israeli etc.
And what interest do they have exactly?
What do they need more young people to compete with and overshadow them.
I tell you what the "stakeholders" thing is.
Their concern is the future and strength of the State of Israel.
Do you think this is wrong?
Gali: It's not true that no one is interested.
The new multi-year plan of the Higher Education Council talks about exactly this matter. In the next 5 years, about 800 senior academic faculty members are expected to retire. The new plan should provide an answer to this retirement, as well as allow the universities to take in another 800 new faculty members (ie - 1600 new faculty members in total). This is due to projects to encourage the return of brains from abroad, and significant budget additions already this year.
Will the plan succeed? Are the extras enough? Not sure. But to say that no one is interested is really inaccurate.
I hear that there is a problem of brain drain, and a small pool of young researchers, and a drop in standards, and all the rest of the stories every year in preparation for the debate on the university budget. For some reason it doesn't happen.
It's like the Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian military build-up that is always revealed before the defense budget debate. And also the absurd poverty report that is published in preparation for the debate on allowances.
Data provided by interested parties should be taken with great caution.
Small correction to the title:
The members of the senior academic staff *say* that they work about 54 hours a week on average.
This is a classic example of the difficulty in drawing conclusions based on surveys. Especially those in which the season wants to present itself in a slightly more successful way than reality. In series of conversations with employees at my workplace, it turns out to me that everyone, without exception, contributes to the company much more than the average employee. (see also lake wobegon effect)
jelly
So why are you outside the academy?
Arguing about nonsense - yes, working hours, not working hours.
What is most worrying is the following sentence:
"Prof. Uri Sivan from the Technion, because in the coming years many faculty members are going to retire and there is no pool of good replacements due to the collapse of the entire education system from elementary to higher education."
The professor is XNUMX percent right: there is a collapse of the education system from elementary to higher education and this is of no interest to anyone here in Israel. And in fact this is the only sentence that should interest anyone from the article here. Because there is a collapse of the whole system there is a brain drain!
Hello Misho, all the tables are from the CBS announcement.
I will ask them for an explanation of the contradiction between this data and the data of the Hot.
Of course, but thanks, there is a problem with the definition of "working hours".
To Micho
To remind you that Archimedes discovered the law named after him in the middle of bathing in a bathtub..
and no He didn't have a bath in the office.
No. Ben Ner:
The data in the HOT report are based on actual filled positions. In any case, I think it is appropriate to state in the article where the data comes from, and what criteria are relied upon when counting the number of senior academic staff members.
The survey is indeed flattering to the academic staff, but again, it is not clear what exactly is considered work - especially regarding research. Is every time I sit at home and think about a problem I have at work count as work time?
To Micho
In my opinion, it is possible that the reported survey referred only to active senior faculty members
Whereas the HOT budget data you are relying on also includes the emeritus.
It is quite clear that the above study does not include the population of emeritus but in the HOT budgets
They are included, that's why their number in the HOT budget is greater than the CBS data.
is not it ?
In my opinion, the survey is very flattering for the academic staff in general and those from the natural sciences in particular.
Assuming that most of them work five days a week, then 56,6 hours a week is about 11,3
Daily working hours !!!.
A very impressive figure in my opinion.
I'm not just saying, I work for the Higher Education Council, and I know the data intimately.
The tables in the article are from the CBS data, but the number of faculty members and their distribution by rank does not say that they are from CBS data, nor is it said where they were taken from. According to the report of the Planning and Budgeting Committee No. 35 (http://www.che.org.il/download/files/vatat-5_1.pdf), the number of senior academic staff in the 7 research universities was about 4,300 in the regular budget (page 222), that is, the budget in which the current teaching and research activities are conducted, and about 4900 in the universities' budgets in general (page 218). (These data are in terms of complete jobs). In XNUMX, although the report has not yet been published, the numbers are not much different.
hope it helps.
Of course, it is also interesting what data you have.
When you say "wrong" you are practically not saying anything!
Who:
It actually says where the data comes from in the article.
I wonder where your data comes from!
I don't know where the data on the number of senior academic staff members come from, but they are clearly not correct for XNUMX.