PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2015
By: Prof. Peretz Lavie, President of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
“The Marker” business daily, Opinions section, August 13, 2013.
Since the discovery of huge gas reserves off the coast of Israel, many of our leaders have been engaged in trying to solve the question of how to best secure this deep-sea treasure so that it may contribute to Israel’s advancement for generations to come. The establishment of a second “Sheshinski Committee” [the public commission mandated to make recommendations on taxation of revenues from natural gas for national benefit] sparked another heated public debate over the issues surrounding the tensions between the private interests of the gas companies and the common good. This is a worthy debate, since the profits from gas royalties, estimated at tens of billions of dollars, profoundly affect the Israeli economy and our future in this country.
Although I am certain that I won’t be the first to propose to the government that profits from gas royalties should be invested in scientific education and research, I would like to suggest making a specific designation, which may have a cardinal effect on the future of science in Israel. I strongly recommend using part of the profits from the gas royalties to create a fund to be used towards renewing infrastructure and refurbishing research equipment in Israeli universities.
The higher education system in Israel has made great advancements over the past decades, but this was achieved under harsh conditions – instead of increases in government funding in conjunction with the increase in the number of students, during this period, universities underwent painful budgetary cuts. The recovery program, which was implemented three years ago, has not improved the situation significantly. As a result, public universities, Technion among them, increased their dependence on philanthropic sources of funding. Unfortunately, it is today impossible to maintain a research university in Israel without donations. To uphold their global standing, universities must invest considerable resources in recruiting outstanding faculty and building them new and advanced laboratories, commensurate with 21st century standards. Today, nearly all of the Technion’s development budget consists of donations arriving from all over the world, especially from the United States. The establishment of buildings and research centers, the acquisition of advanced scientific equipment, and the development of infrastructure for new faculty are all dependent on generous contributions from friends of the Technion.
This state of affairs, where a research university’s entire development plans are hinged on the generosity of its well-to-do friends, is a distorted reality; the Madoff case and the economic crisis in the U.S., which impaired charitable private donations to Israeli academic institutions, were painful examples of the fragility of philanthropic funding. Moreover, the current situation cannot persist forever. The Jewish community in the U.S., which is the major source of philanthropic funding to Israel’s academic institutions, is in the midst of generational transition that may lead to a change in attitude towards Israel. The older generation, which poured a fortune into Israel in support of the young nation-state founded upon the ruins of the Holocaust and World War II, is disappearing. Its place has been taken by a new, pragmatic and individualistic generation whose ties to Israel are not as strong, and who in many cases, prefer to contribute to the communities in which they live rather than to the Jewish State. This process has obvious consequences: fundraising for Israeli academic institutions may become less certain and more difficult to secure, and in the future may also become beyond reach.
At the same time, university research infrastructure is becoming dated and irrelevant. At Technion —which in 2012 celebrated the cornerstone centennial of its historic building — over half of the buildings on campus are at least 40 years old. Sophisticated scientific equipment for research areas such as nanotechnology, or photonics, purchased from donations a decade ago, are already considered outdated and are in need of being upgraded or replaced.
For example, the “Titan,” the giant electron microscope that allows researchers to observe materials at the atomic level, was purchased seven years ago at a cost of $6 million, and was, at the time, considered state of the art. Today, it is outdated, and to maintain research excellence at the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, whose members include Nobel laureate in chemistry Prof. Dan Shechtman, we need to upgrade it at a cost of $3 million, or replace it with a newer microscope that is double the price. But we cannot allocate any funds to it from the Technion operating budget.
In a recent survey conducted by Technion’s Director General we found that we are in need of at least 400 million NIS to renew vital infrastructure on campus. The only way we are able to raise this amount of capital is through approaching our generous donors.
It is indisputable that human capital is Israel’s main resource. To continue to develop this human capital, we need advanced research universities. The new underwater natural treasure is a golden opportunity to secure the future of our scientific research infrastructure and reduce our dependence on donations. It would be a wise step if we were all to reap the fruits – academia, industry and citizens of the State of Israel – for many decades to come.
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