Does this imply that the prduction of knowledge is categorically worth less than the production of goods? I mean, of course there are folks living on fellowships and not doing much, but there are also folks living on salaries and not doing much in their workplaces. Isn't that a characteristic or personality, or organizational culture, rather than the discipline itself? The solution is not to whine about academics "eating for free", but to introduce a culture of work and productivity in academia.

I'm afraid that these approaches reflect, or encourage, an anti-intellectualist position by which the contribution of science and knowledge to human welfare is somehow downplayed and ignored compared to the "real" work in the "fields".

And one last comment, this time for Noam: Observing the situation in the Israeli academia without connecting it to other national processes misses a large part of the picture. The reason why universities have less money has to do with State priorities, allocating resources to security at the expense of education. With a given amount of money, you can EITHER wage war OR have a university.

"With a given amount of money, you can EITHER wage war OR have a university."

"Does this imply that the prduction of knowledge is categorically worth less than the production of goods?"

I don't follow. The salaries of state employees are paid from the same pool of money as the fellowship of doctoral students. The employee works (=produces knowledge/items) in her office, Noam works in his lab, I work in the library. Our financial existence is funded by the state (in my case, the state of California). Why does it follow that Noam's, and mine, are less worthy to you than the secretary's?

Or let's look at it this way: the university has a certain amount of money. It pays some of it to professors, as salaries, and some of it to doctoral students, as fellowships. We're newer in the system, but both they and us work in labs and libraries, do research, produce knowledge and, in general, add to the university's usefulness as an instrument for progress (perhaps Noam more than me). Is the professors' existance worth more than ours?

This may be clear to you. It is not clear to me, and perhaps to other readers too. True, in prehistoric societies , getting food was more important, in the very short run, than learning of better weapon-building techniques; those facilitated getting more, and more varied, food for the long run. I doubt that the hunters felt that the tool-builder was living at their expense. I find this comment reductionist and simplistic for a 21-century setting. At this point, with social complexity as it is, I feel it rather ridiculous to claim that academics are optional.

I have a feeling that what we're really arguing about (if we're, indeed, arguing and not having a Friday night whining session) is for an against an extreme form of capitalism, where the state is under no obligation to supply citizens with any services that better their lives in the long run. Not only is this unrealistic, it is dangerous, and reflects an extremely harmful set of priorities. Particularly since the current allocation of resources - seemingly leaning more toward the "short-term survival", security, and disregarding long term investments in science, knowledge and culture, will, I believe, prove detrimental to Israeli society. Once we're done "defending' ourselves, we may find we don't have much to defend.

Well, I think at this point we have nothing left but to agree to disagree.

By the way: I'm a woman; I'm always entertained by the default assumption made by several folks in the Ayal, when I'm compelled to write in a non-gendered language, that I'm a man (Ayelet and Bareket, you are probably getting a kick out of this). There was actually one fellow who adressed me as a man, twice, despite the fact that I was writing in Hebrew and using female forms in first person. I'm not saying it to needle you personally, just making an observation.

Which is precisely what I meant when I asked Uri (Ori?) about the value of knowledge production, soupman!

You are being "forced" to pay for many essential services which, eventually, are supposed to provide the society which you live in with progress. You are "forced" to finance electric engineering research, so that several years later you'll enjoy cellular phones. You are "forced" to pay for the education of transport researchers, so that later you will have a suburbian train in the Tel Aviv area. You are "forced" to finance food engineering studies and research, so that the health and nutrition of you and your children will be taken care of for years to come. You are "forced" to finance the studies of literature, art, music, history, so that your life, and the lives of others, will be enriched with culture.

Need it be explained that this knowledge cannot be produced in people's private homes? That the people who produce this knowledge need labs, and equipment, and libraries? That they need to be on top of their fields and converse with academics in other places, through conferences and publications? The "inessential" academia is supplementing your life with many things that you now, or in a few years, deem essential.

Oh, and this may not be the most important function of academic institutions, but if you have an academic degree(s), you might want to appreciate the institution that supplies you the credentials required by the state, and by all these industrious and worthy employers, to get a job, so you can whine about financing it with taxes in the first place. Really, if you're going to whine about paying taxes, academia would be one of the least outrageous expenses.

I don't see the national aspect of academia as a "bad" thing. And I'm saying this as someone who lives in a country where state universities are struggling with budget while private universities, supplying posh credentials to the nobility, are flourishing.

Why universities should not live off student tuition? Precisely because, then, tuition would be huge, and only a selected (rich) few can study. Which is exactly what happens in Ivy league schools. It is sad that state universities have to struggle so hard, while their graduates (some of which are smarter than the folks in the private institution) end up with a degree that's somehow "worth less" because it was paid for by the students. Cancel state schools and you end up with either one of two, or both: "Derby" style diploma mills, or ivy-league schools which don't give much of a chance to people with less funding. What would you say to a rich student refusing to fund with "his" tuition fellowships for the less fortunate ones? Unless one doesn't care about social inequalities - and I'm assuming we both do, because if not, we don't have much ground for discussion - that's an insufferable ramification of privatizing academia.

As a huge fan of both Shalom Chanoch (man, I hate these CH's) and Meit Shalev, I think that a versatile world should make room for all of them. But there's an issue of accessibility. While the advantages of popular music and literature are more obvious to us, the advantages of nuclear research are less entangled in our immediate life. It is unlikely, therefore, that the market will run itself in a direction that will compute a set of priorities including the less accessible stuff.

As to the degree system: As it happens, I do think that some departments and faculties should not exist in their current structure. They should be either merged with other departments, or centered less around disciplines and more about problem-oriented teams. I don't have a measurement table for which disciplines are more or less useful. Which is precisely my point.

‏¹ http://www.aiipowmia.com/inter24/in160104telegram.ht...
‏² http://archive.1september.ru/eng/2000/no15_2.htm