In the age of the Corona, Prof. Zilberschutz also wonders if there is any point in an academic degree. • She hopes for distance learning • Defends freedom of expression • and provides a fascinating prediction: "In a decade there will be fewer universities in the country, we will not need them all."
"The role of the system is to absorb the best researchers and lecturers."
Zilbershtz
Photography:
Joshua Joseph
The academic year began this week with a weak response.
The student festival has known busy days of joy or strikes, but nothing has prepared us for the silence in which 320,000 students in colleges and universities will open the 2011/11 school year. Prof. Yaffa Zilbershtz, chair of the Planning and Budgeting Committee at the Council for Higher Education, finds it difficult to see the university Rika: "There were supposed to be masses of students here now. At a time like this, cafeterias are open and students are excited, and look at these seminar rooms," she points to the corridors of the Bar-Ilan law school, sighing at the silence at her unofficial residence.
"Not only is it my home, it's a successful home. I got married at a young age, after military service. I started my studies as a married woman. I did a law degree here, I did my master's degree at New York University. Then I was at home for a few years, raising the children. "At 35, I returned here for my doctorate, and I've been here ever since."
The subject of the dissertation was freedom of movement, which has become relevant these days due to the corona plague and the restrictions imposed.
The faculty's founder, Prof. Aharon Anker, was the main facilitator, who will be reinforced by a first-rate instructor - Prof. Aharon Barak: "We kept in touch all these years, I spoke with him last week."
During her doctorate, Zilberschutz began teaching at Bar-Ilan, and at the same time continued in the field of academic management, becoming vice dean of the faculty and then dean and then vice president of the university.
Gradually began to develop a future outline for distance learning, on a small fire.
"In 2015, Naftali Bennett, who was the Minister of Education at the time, heard about it, he was fascinated by the subject of digital learning and he called me to the Planning and Budgeting Committee."
The second semester of this year is characterized by a sharp transition from frontal to digital learning.
The Ministry of Education is still trying to get used to it, in universities within two weeks the order has shifted to zoom.
"In high-tech, you also look at self-taught people, not just those who have studied engineering." Zoom at Ben-Gurion University // Photo: Dudu Greenspan
"In the State of Israel, most of the higher education budget comes from the government, more than 60% funding. The bodies entrusted with higher education are the MLAG and the OT. We have an advantage that we are budgeted six years ahead, it is a government decision that has been working well for 20 years. To ensure budgets and additions, we present a plan for what the money is needed for, and one of the budgets is the issue of distance learning. We anticipated the potential of digital learning before the system in Israel grasped its size and competitively encouraged institutions to move to such a model. It was time to get to campus, everyone knew how to transfer themselves to distance learning because the infrastructure and thinking had already begun. "
The Open University has been doing this for years.
"The founder of the 'open' predicted the future and understood ahead of time what education through technology is. But look, we would not want studies to be completely like that. There is no substitute for interaction. Attendance should be combined with hybrid learning."
What may change next?
"Distance learning gives flexibility. Nothing replaces a 16-person graduate seminar, but a 300-person basic course can certainly be delivered in the media."
Will all compulsory courses go to the media?
"A lot of learning can be done in digital media, and we're working on that already. Not all courses will be frontal, and three-year degrees will be shortened. Everything was designed as a distant vision but Corona was ahead of plans."
Another relevant thing that will change the nature of the degrees in the long run will surely cause a crisis in the higher education market in Israel - the number of institutions: "If today I want to study a course at Harvard and MIT I should not go there. I can also study courses at Bar-Ilan that is not in Hebrew. "And in Tel Aviv, which is not in Bar-Ilan and vice versa. So in a decade's view, let's say, we will not need all the institutions that exist today."
What will happen here, in these vast spaces?
"Attendance is currently being used on campus for study and research. There is entrepreneurial potential in the university's physical space, for example entrepreneurship laboratories and incubators that can be seen at MIT. Such complexes are also being set up in Israel to maximize real estate and knowledge.
This is something that even in the digital age we will not give up, there is no substitute for it. "
"We do not have Robin Hood"
Tuition remains as it was, although tuition has shrunk.
"We need to subsidize the consumer and not the commodity. There is a cake of a support amount, and if we lower the tuition by NIS 2,000-1,000, it will not help anyone: there are people who will not feel the download because they have enough, and there are people who also have this discount. Do not bring them closer to the amount that will allow them to pay. Should the money be scattered, thrown away and seen who picks up? In all higher education institutions there are mechanisms before which students flatten their problems. I do not decide who needs, there are criteria and it is smart. We do not have Robin Hood. Came from somewhere.
"Dare to appoint a woman." Bennett // Photo: Eric Sultan
"The question of lowering the total income in the country should not be on the agenda, the point is to help needy students, and all colleges and universities are busy with it from morning to night, deans and foundations are mobilized for the cause.
Interest-free loans can also be a solution because people are learning professions and can repay in the future.
Just do not do stupid and populist things. "
What is the Ministry of Finance doing is stupid and populist?
"I do not take newspaper headlines and rely on them. To tell you what I think I need to study the subject. I do not enter other worlds."
There is a gap between the young and successful researchers and the veteran standards and lecturers. A talented doctor of humanities, who completed the study at the age of 36, understands that there is no way he will get a standard, so pity the effort.
"It can also happen to him with a doctorate in biology. We encourage people to do a doctorate but they are not guaranteed a place in the academy. It is not possible to enter an academy without a doctorate but not necessarily everyone who bothered to get a doctorate will enter the academy, so I think Or you will not enter. Many people will make an informed decision to do a doctorate anyway, and then we will get people with high skills elsewhere. I studied in a high school where all the teachers were doctors, they came from Germany and studied literature and mathematics and biology at the highest level. "Teachers like that. It's not a social disaster to understand that the academy is a closed club. You may be a great person, but sitting on a standard there is a better person, so that until he retires you will not be able to enter."
Reminiscent of the Ministry of Education.
"A person who receives academic tenure is like a judge. In an academic system a person should be sure that he does not take risks if he says everything he thinks. Academic tenure is academic freedom."
What are you doing to ensure the freedom of opinion, freedom of expression and research freedom of students and lecturers?
"Intervene as little as possible. Leave to places the principles set out in the MLAG Law of Academic and Administrative Freedom.
The more freedom that is given, the greater the chance that all opinions will be heard. "
Is there no left-wing bias in academia?
"The system sanctifies one principle: research and teaching excellence."
There are boring lecturers who grab a chair of fascinating lecturers. Lecturers who have long since lost touch with live research, and their classes are empty.
"It has a price, but it is impossible to give up their place. The role of the academic system is to absorb the best researchers and lecturers. Does it always succeed? No, you do not always succeed in everything. Sometimes at some point things look the best and most fascinating, and they become "Being irrelevant. It's a dynamic world. As always, there are those who are excellent and committed and there are those who will continue to develop and those who are less. That is the nature of the world."
Is there no politics in implementing these standards?
"The system tries to do its best. It does not absorb people because they are cousins but according to the doctorate and publications, and entry today is much harder than before. By the way, those who do research in biology and computers, for example, can also be absorbed in industry. "We need to be flexible."
In the humanities the situation seems final.
"Crying about the state of the humanities does not reflect reality. There is a lot of research and many doctorates. Although fewer students come to undergraduate degrees, this does not mean that good people do not come to research. The solution is a collection of courses, because once micro-degrees become relevant, people will want to study. The fields. This is the academy of the 21st century. "
"The proportion of ultra-Orthodox in higher education should be increased as much as possible, this is important for the state" // Photo Archive: Dudi Vaknin
The course files that Prof. Zilberschutz talks about make up the "micro-degree" - an initiative that has already been launched at Tel Aviv University and is gradually reaching other institutions, and is intended for those who have already done a degree in a certain field and want to get an idea in other fields.
"DATA and data are very valuable in the world. Say we want to peek into this world? Are you told there is no entry because it is reserved for the world of those who decided to do computer science. So now we come and say - come on, take a group of courses that you have an idea of, You can study, say, sentences, but take a cluster of knowledge from other real studies and get into things there as well. Or an engineer who thinks it's important to study the history of classical philosophy. The micro-degree does not come to dwarf your degree, it comes to enrich to get a certain look into a discipline It definitely obliges you. "
What certificate does it give?
"Why are we formalists? It adds value and benefits to the job market. The high-tech market also looks at people who are self-taught, not just those who studied engineering from age 21 to age 25. If I interview someone who studied literature but also took an interest in data science and took courses "In art - I am positively impressed. There should be no dichotomy. A micro-degree is not meant to replace but to enrich on a personal level and with diversity."
So why burn years in university?
"Great question. Look what happened during the Corona period: the year has opened, we are sitting in a room 4 meters away, empty here but still everyone is learning while we talk. Things can be done differently."
Zilbershtz is the last year of the position. There were no women in this position before her ("Bennett was the first to dare to appoint a woman to the position"), and it is clear that part of the work is directed towards gender. "I look at the environment I am in, and there are not enough women.
At the PA we did affirmative action, 5 out of 7 women in the ranks of VPs, but look at the presidents of institutions and rectors.
There is a presidency only at the Open University.
We have now launched a gender fairness index for academic institutions, in order to correct the distortion that in the academic worlds there is not enough female leadership at the tops of management. "
It does not happen naturally?
"It happens slowly because there are failures, so there needs to be an incentive. In the senior staff, for example, there are too few full professorships, there is a numerical effect. 60% of women are students with all degrees, and full professorships are about 20%. Something happens in a way that prevents them from reaching "The summit, and the gender fairness index will solve it. The institutions are supposed to look inward, report how many women are in the decision-making centers, and the better they get, the more they will get paid."
There are a few more things that Zilberschutz should be able to do this year: "The proportion of ultra-Orthodox people in higher education should be increased as much as possible. This is important for the state. The number of students in higher education should be proportional to 20%, and we are currently at 4%. "I treat Bedouin students separately, even there we have not yet reached our destination."
You mentioned Bennett, and in the past you were associated with the Jewish home. She was recruited in 2009 to a committee that elected a new chairman of the party.
"The late Moti Zisser asked at the time that I help, it was in the days of the late Uri Orbach, the committee then elected Hershkovitz."
Detail you would like to delete?
"No, but every time it floats and it's so unrelated because my involvement was nil. I'm a public person now. I don't belong in that."
And if Bennett offers you to run with him on the new list?
"When he offers we will talk."