During the summer we were exposed to the pension additions given by the Minister of Defense to the permanent staff, a group belonging to the most "orderly" sector in Israel that every other sector is just desperate to stick to: the uniformed (whether they belong to the minority or not). And these days, we read sympathetically about another group that knows how to submit a resignation to the Minister of Health because of the inconceivable burden imposed on it. It's just that to the delight of the interns - and this was written out of full paragon - there is a light at the end of the tunnel: in the days when there will be senior doctors, they will receive respectful status not only from their patients, but also from their bank manager.
It is only that a group of academic faculty members, and especially the one whose entire affiliation and activities take place in the academic institution in which it operates, from its beginnings in the first degree until receiving the professor's degrees, expects a different reality. Those who are behind three decades of "devoting full time" to economic uncertainty - receive salaries that, to say the least, we will call those with which it is difficult to "end the month."
To those who wonder why there is an increase in women entering the doctoral arena - which indicates that there will be, and indeed will be, a gender change in the nature of the academic arena in a few decades - deserves to provide a less enlightened and celebratory argument from a feminist point of view: . Those who "come to make a living" cannot afford, with all their love for research and science, to stay in academia. The salary data of the ranks of lecturers at universities are available to every citizen on the website, and whenever there is exposure to them I am to the same astonishment, probably due to the gap between the public capital attributed to who is a "university professor" and who is paid after decades of work around the clock .
Why is the situation leading?
Giving up by many of our students an academic career, or preferring to look for research paths in the business arena;
And the constant demand of too many of the lecturers for income supplementation in the form of lectures, counseling and what not - which does not allow the full devotion to the reason they are here: to research and guide the research students.
The preservation of the meager salaries of the academic staff is one of the most enormous tragedies of the right-wing governments that have served here, and one of their greatest betrayals in their electorate.
After all, who benefits from the preservation of the pathetic salary of the academic staff?
What does it preserve?
It preserves the fact that the vast majority of those applying for academic careers, especially in the social sciences and humanities, where there is no horizon to make one "exit" or another, belong to the Israeli capital elite, which does not necessarily have to rely on its monthly paycheck to survive.
It is therefore no wonder that their socio-political views more reflect the secular-June-liberal camp.
To reverse the trend, right-wing governments had to raise wages. Then even those who belong to traditional-conservative audiences, and by definition are parents of more children and first generation to higher education (so they are not part of families that give them financial security, beyond the wage slip they themselves will earn), would allow themselves to work in an institution that provides not only symbolic capital, But also for a decent and enabling wage.
"This is the economy, idiot," those who said it have already said, and this is also relevant to the university arena.
In a reality where the state is led by a prime minister and an education minister who blamed previous right-wing governments, and rightly so, who only spoke and did nothing to promote substantial socio-political change - one can hope for a real change in lecturers' salaries.
The rhetorical "if you will" rhetoric that there are "left-wing lecturers" here or there is a key disguise that will allow other audiences to enter the now open arena, for the most part, for homogeneous groups: When it will be possible to earn a decent living from academic careers - new populations will populate the academy .
