Financially Ailing Universities Must Adopt Fiscally Responsible Budgets

Yigal Allon, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Education, said last night that the financial difficulties of Israeli universities were largely of their own making and that they could not expect the government to ball them out unless they adopted policies of fiscal responsibility. Allon spoke at the beginning of a Knesset debate on the financial straits in which most Israeli institutions of higher learning find themselves. The government has been covering about half of the universities’ budgets for the past 2-3 years through grants,

Allon said the universities could not decide, by themselves, how much money to spend and then appeal to the Cabinet for aid when they run into money troubles. He said the Israeli tax-payer as well as the donor from abroad had the right to ask whether the funds were being spent wisely, not in terms of academic freedom but in terms of social, economic, educational and pedagogic requirements.

Allon stressed that the government’s higher education council and its proposed-grants committee would not interfere in course syllabuses or appointments. But it has every right to interfere when the question is one of opening new faculties or departments, the Minister said. He said he would seek new sources of financing to cover the universities’ current deficits but at the same time would make certain demands on the schools.

Two New York Congressmen intervened today on behalf of eight Soviet-Jewish activists arrested in Moscow last week apparently to keep them out of circulation during President Nixon’s visit. Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal (D.N.Y.) sent a cable to US Ambassador in Moscow, Jacob Beam, for relay to Soviet authorities. Rep. Jack Kemp (R.N.Y.) said he would intervene personally with the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Anatoly F. Dobrynin.