Finance minister denies plan to raise university tuition
Yair Lapid lambasted for dodging opposition meeting on budget; Liberman suggests 10% pay cut for MKs in light of crisis
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
The treasury has no plans to cut funding for universities and raise student tuition costs in next year’s budget, Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said on Tuesday. He was responding to representatives of the country’s student union who claimed that Finance Ministry officials told them that tuition would have to be raised in the coming academic year.
“No one has decided to raise student tuition,” Lapid wrote on his Facebook page, adding that he was against increased education expenses and “would have to demonstrate against himself” if such measures were implemented.
The upcoming budget “will not be easy” but will place “the middle class at the center.” And university students are “tomorrow’s middle class,” he added.
Hebrew media reported Tuesday that the deputy head of the Finance Ministry’s budget department told National Student Union head Uri Rashtik that the planned cuts could reach hundreds of millions of shekels, which in turn would lead to a significant increase in tuition costs starting the next academic year.
Opposition leader Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) denounced the purported rise in the cost of education in a special Knesset opposition meeting that she called Tuesday to discuss the budget deficit.
“Have you no shame?” she said, addressing Lapid, who didn’t attend the meeting. “Two minutes into your term, and whom do you hit first? Students who pay taxes and service in the reserves.”
Raising tuition ran counter to Yesh Atid’s platform, she added.
Lapid’s decision to skip the meeting and send Deputy Finance Minister Micky Levy in his stead was widely panned by the opposition, as was his Facebook post on the education issue. “Lapid is a coward” who is “afraid to answer questions” and “prefers the Facebook plenum” instead of “confronting a democratic parliament,” said MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism.
Meanwhile, MK Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) said that Lapid has his “full support” and needs the “opportunity to work and make the policies that he believes will be more favorable to the Israeli economy.” Liberman went on to suggest that given the budget crisis, Knesset members should consider a 10 percent pay cut as a “personal example.”
The 2013-2014 budget is due to be approved in the coming months and will be in place through 2014.
Israel’s budget deficit in 2012 reached NIS 39 billion, or 4.2% of its gross domestic product, more than double the state’s original projection for the shortfall. Officials have said new taxes and severe cuts in public expenditures will have to be made in the new budget to bring the deficit under control.
Ron Friedman contributed to this report.
