… are a mess. Corrupt, cynical, and indifferent to the law. Here’s an update from Ha’aretz:
A scathing report issued last week by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss details how Israel’s universities got into an ongoing budgetary crisis that threatens their academic quality and their very existence. The report lists widespread wage irregularities, generous pension plans, inflated bonuses and the improper use of a university academic fund as a personal savings plan for senior faculty rather than its stated purpose: scientific knowledge.
It appears that the universities are using state funds as they see fit. They handed out hundreds of millions of shekels in wage benefits without receiving authorization from the Finance Ministry’s wages director. Since 1999, the universities have refused to allow the wages director to monitor their activities. This enabled Tel Aviv University to pay raises of 55 percent as compensation for reorganization, even though the treasury had authorized an increase of just 21 percent. Bar-Ilan University paid administrative workers the same salary as professors with the longest tenures.
As for pension plans, the comptroller found that the deficits accrued by the universities reached NIS 17.9 billion – not NIS 1.6 billion, as the universities say. This occurred because the universities had overly generous pension policies, in some instances providing pensions that accrued at twice the accepted rate or pensions that reached 92 percent of wages.
The Council of University Presidents does not seem to like being criticized. The report describes how the comptroller’s office repeatedly asked the university heads to provide information – only to have them dodge and evade the requests, and even attempt to undermine the comptroller’s work.
“The responsibility for the large wage irregularities falls first and foremost on the shoulders of their administrations, which have been giving their workers preferential wage and retirement benefits over the course of years, without authorization, while foiling every attempt to supervise the universities,” Lindenstrauss wrote..
And here’s a delicious detail from the Jerusalem Post:
“[R]esearch funding went to business class plane tickets for senior professors.”
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:40AM
92% of wages.
It is to dream.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:49AM
Since some US public pension systems max out at a pretty high percentage, and use a base that may include non-wage compensation (e.g., housing) I’d think 92% is not unheard of here. As for "Bar-Ilan University paid administrative workers the same salary as professors with the longest tenures," does that mean that some administrators are paid more than faculty members?