OlehGirl.com
Strike! Dear g-d yes!
No, not on this blog –the blog was on a completely unwilling strike already.
I mean a strike of university professors –it is looking very much like we will not be starting the school year at the public universities (pretty much at all universities outside of the IDC, which is wholly private and takes no government funding). We want a raise in salary of 20%. This is not an unreasonable demand. University professors in this country have more than double the teaching load in a year of university professors in Europe and the U.S. We earn a quarter of the salary of our non-Israeli counterparts. I think I mentioned previously that, at NYU, the graduate students there receive a higher salary for their teaching or research assistantships (meaning teaching one class in a year or helping a professor to teach 2 classes in a year, or simply to focus on conducting research) than I do here as a Senior Lecturer. They receive a significantly higher salary. Further, professors in normal countries receive funding from their universities for conducting research. They are given the equipment and lab space necessary for conducting the research they specialize in –that is, after all, why the university hired them. Such is not the case here. Since my arrival here two years ago, I have not been able to carry out a single research study in my area –the reason? No lab space, no equipment. And being paid slave wages. Peachy, yes?
Not only do we professors suffer personally and professionally under such constraints but so do the students whom we teach and the entire country in which we live. Quite simply, higher education in this country is being left behind in the dirt by other countries and this means that the future prosperity and viability of our country will suffer terribly.
So forward the strike I say!
| Print article | This entry was posted by Yael on October 15, 2007 at 3:49 pm, and is filed under Israel. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
(Photo by Dani Machlis)
about 5 years ago
Hey lady!
glad to see you are not dead despite lengthy blog absence. I thought those nasty estate agents got you. Yeah three cheers for the strike – long may it live!
go look at my blog for pretty sicily pictures!
Kat
about 5 years ago
If you get some money out of it, why not? Sometimes I wish I could strike at my job but I’d just get fired.
about 5 years ago
Please no strike!
asa student the strike last year was a royal pain in the***
and no real result.
All we did is lose very valuble time
Anyway I asked our student body at my colege and there everything is as planned
about 5 years ago
Welcome back! I hope the guy who fixed the blog didn’t have a nervous collapse enroute?
about 5 years ago
PS you might want to check out Daniel Gordis’s recent dispatch at his website. It might encourage you
about 5 years ago
The blog article that Noa pointed out is fantastic!! Go read here if interested (and you won’t be disappointed): http://www.danielgordis.org/Site/Site_Dispatches.asp
Awesome! Right, I’m newly inspired
about 5 years ago
Might I be a pain and ask what the range of salaries are (not being Israeli to actually ask what your salary is), assuming (big assumption) a full-time appointment?
And, I would say, this is further reason to promote privatization, as the government control of education is destroying it.
about 5 years ago
As a half-time senior lecturer I was talking home just at 5,000 sheks a month before my olah tax-break status ended and then it went down to about 4400 averaged. Double that for full time. Considering that I was making 75k a year the day I stepped out of grad school (and would be making about 100-110k today –grin, at least that is what Cornell offered me and I said no to come here instead) in the U.S., that uh, really sucks. And it is not just the salary alone, it is also the lack of funds for conducting research or even the most basic of equipment and space for conducting research. I had a 25k slush fund per year for my research and a beeaauutiful lab…
about 5 years ago
I work in the midwest and salaries are considerably lower — in fact, all of my offers, even the ones from California were at about the 60K a year level. Granted, that is a 9mo salary that is paid over 12 months and we have the opportunity to make summer salary as well, either by teaching or being supported by a grant. My experience with research funds is that part of the salary package includes “start up funds” that are to be used in the first 2 – 3 years for travel to conferences, buying equipment and furniture, paying association dues, even summer salary. Beyond that, however, all funds that support research and labs and equipment we have to raise by applying for and getting grants.
In fact, most of the people in my department could be making a lot more money in industry. I gather that they are here because they like the flexibility and academic freedom that academia offers.
Finally, in order to compare apples to apples, it would be better to know either your NY state take home or your Israeli net salary (but that’s just the quant in me).
about 5 years ago
Jen, nu in my last year in the U.S. I took home a tidy bit above 5k U.S. per month and got a tax rebate of about 8k once a year after I bought property (about 4.5 k before the house, though the super tax guy I went to in my last year there said had I not used H&R Block, I would have gotten about 6k back in the years prior as they did not ask about or bother with the smaller tax write-off things). Not sure about the location pushing the salary as I was offered a slightly higher salary at MSU and a comparable one at UT. Definitely, though you make much better in industry if you have the serious quant skills –we had students going into R&D for high tech companies and other industry with offers of 130k right out of grad school.
about 5 years ago
Sorry, I just don’t believe you put the numbers right. I’m in Israeli university and I have some info about American ones.
The only explanation I can think of is that maybe you were offered tenure track in Cornell and non-tenure track position at BGU. But in this case, why are you surprised? In America there are plenty of low-pay non-tenure track positions. Plus, BGU is not Cornell. In comparable level state college in America you’d get 30,000-50,000 dollar a year for a non-tenure track position (the statistics about mean salaries in every academic field is available from the internet). Here working full time you said you get around 30,000 dollar a year (4 shekel=1 dollar). Now take into account that living expenses in Israel are significantly lower.
Full Professor in my Israeli university gets more than 80,000 dollar a year, or 30000 shekel a month.
Of course the salaries here are lower, but comparable to the American ones.
about 5 years ago
Nausicaa –the offers in the U.S. were indeed tenure track (actually C was an offer of position with tenure from the get-go). I was told that the position at BGU was also going to be tenure track and at the end of 3 years when the contract was renewed would be a full-time appointment but very quickly realized after getting here that there was no way it would become a full-time position as there was simply no fulltime “line” available (the previous full-time position was split into 2 half-time hires) and the department had a snowballs chance in hell of being given further lines. At the IDC my position is better paid (full time brings in 17,200 sheks a month before taxes –since I haven’t been paid yet, I’m not sure what the after-tax take-home will be). I was also told it would be a tenure track position but…I received something this week via email about getting my “visiting professor” business cards and was like excuse me? I’m trying to clarify this currently. Anc actually, the cost of living is not less here –at least not if you live in Tel Aviv. Percentage-wise, my rent is a larger percent of my salary in Tel Aviv than was my rent vs salary in New York City and the tax rate is nearly double here what it is in the States.