"The real fear when it comes to the brain drain, is a spill-over into mediocrity, because when you can't recruit outstanding graduates to academic institutions, you start making compromises and bringing in second-rate lecturers," warned Dr. Dan Ben David, from the Department of Public Policy at Tel University at the Sderot Conference today.
Ben David presented data from a research paper he wrote, which show that the number of Israeli academics employed at economics faculties at universities in the US is substantially higher than the number of foreign lecturers from other countries. The proportion of Israeli lecturers at these faculties in the US was 29%, compared with 12% from Canada, 4.3% from the Netherlands, and 2.9% from France. Ben David showed that the salary of the average economics lecturer in the US was 1.6 times higher than that of his counterpart in Israel, while a leading professor earns more than twice what he or she would get in Israel. "The group most likely to leave Israel are the lecturers," he added. "They don't stay here to argue about what a brain drain is, they simply get up and go."
Prof. Israel Aumann, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics for 2005, strongly disagreed with Ben David's findings. "I'm not all that concerned about a brain drain. We have bigger headaches than this. The facts Ben David presented are regrettable, but I know a lot of economists in Israel and they are not miserable by any measure. They live quite well. It's not just about pay. What is important is that we have people for whom Israel is of the utmost importance. I don't call that commitment to the country, but Zionism," said Aumann to applause.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on November 7, 2007
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2007