The Chronicle: Israeli Higher Education Shuts Down as Student Strike Stretches Into 4th Week
University campuses across Israel were chained shut on Monday as students intensified their protest, now in its fourth week, against proposed reforms in who pays for higher educationStudents held demonstrations in Beersheba, Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.
In advertisements published in newspapers on Friday, the leaders of Israel’s universities urged students to end their strike, which entered its 24th day on Monday, and threatened to cancel academic credit for the semester for anyone not showing up for class. The Committee of University Presidents extended that deadline until today as government representatives, university presidents, and students continued negotiations in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement.
But student leaders on Monday rejected a draft agreement offered by the government. Itay Barda, leader of the National Student Organization, described the proposal as “media spin.”
“The draft is still very far from the demands which we have presented,” he said.
The country’s 250,000 students are protesting plans by the Shochat Committee — a government-appointed panel led by a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat — to raise student fees from their current level of about $2,150 per year. The Shochat Committee says student fees should be restructured, with wealthier students paying more. But its proposals, to be presented in June, ignore findings by a previous government-appointed commission and the education committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, both of which recommended lowering student fees.
The students are also demanding that the government reinstate some $300-million that has been slashed from the education budget in recent years. The Shochat Committee has agreed to recommend restoring the funds, but only if students accept future increases in fees.
Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Knesset’s education committee, said a government offer to freeze tuition for students already enrolled while raising fees for new students was “immoral.”
The government and the Knesset agreed to carry out the previous commission’s recommendations to gradually reduce fees, Rabbi Melchior said.
The students’ protest is backed by the two major university-faculty unions, but Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University and chairman of the Committee of University Presidents, said the students were in danger of losing sufficient class time to complete the semester. He offered to extend the current semester by two weeks if the students returned to class by today.
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