Dear faculty members at the Hebrew University,
The academic year and most of the exams are already behind us, and while the public storm focused on in all my previous letters is not over, in this letter I will focus on updated achievements of the past year, and on the future academic challenges we face.
I understand that in these days for many of us, it is difficult and even illogical to talk about academic matters. And yet, the whole struggle we have been waging these past months is aimed at ensuring the independent existence of academia in Israel, and the democratic character of the State of Israel in general. We are here forever, so it is important for me in these difficult days to also talk about routine matters.
Achievements in raising research funds
2022-2023 has yielded excellent achievements in attaining competitive research grants—testimony to the high quality of our faculty members. In the 2022 ERC call for candidates in the three tracks, 16 of our researchers won the considerable amount of 31.5 million Euros. The recent results of the 2023 ERC starters placed us in first place in the country with ten researcher awardees, for a total amount of 16.7 million Euros.
Our achievements at the ISF were also impressive and they also place us in first place in Israel. In the personal track we won an amount of NIS 132 million for 118 research studies, and in the breakthrough grants (MAPATZ) we won four grants totaling NIS 15.5 million.
Congratulations to the winners, and many thanks to all who competed—even to those who didn't win this year. Many thanks to the entire R&D team led by the Vice-President for R&D, Prof. Aharon Palmon, and the Authority's Director, Hani Ben-Yehuda as well as to all the research coordinators in the various units.
A budgeting model that encourages excellence
For the coming academic year, we developed a new budgeting model that aims to finance the annual work plans of the faculties and schools. Our focus was to develop a model which will motivate excellence—that is, will increase the research and pedagogical impact of the Hebrew University.
The model consists of a teaching component (about two-thirds of the budget) and an incentives component (about one-third).
The teaching model finances, among other things, the number of students in each standard year, the number of graduates and the number of students in courses, including (unlike in the past) in the master's degree. The model gives extra weight to first-year students (to motivate student recruitment) and graduates (to prevent dropout and motivate timely degree completion). An important addition to the model is reference to the size of study groups: the model provides financial incentives to work in smaller work groups, due to the pedagogical importance attributed to teaching in small groups.
The incentive model includes two teaching incentives (20% of the total incentives) and two research incentives (80% of the total incentives).
The first teaching incentive gives increased monetary value to students studying in two different faculties, with the aim of encouraging multidisciplinarity, and correspondingly encouraging a wider variety of multidisciplinary programs. The second teaching incentive is based on the pedagogical grade of the courses in the faculty. This is an index developed by the Unit for Teaching of Learning, and it gives a grade to each course according to the parameters that appear in the syllabus (and in your reports), which include formative assessment, cooperative learning, communication with students, asynchronous information access, and self-monitoring of learning.
The first research incentive is the faculty's scope of raising research funds (an incentive that also existed in the previous model). The second research incentive is the quality of the journals in which the articles of the faculty's researchers are published, and the extent to which the faculty has improved in recent years in this index. We hope to include as soon as possible both books and unique indices for the various faculties, in accordance with the moves promoted by the Committee of Higher Education (CHE).
I would like to thank the many who were involved in the development of the model, and especially Avraham Feinsilver, who built the statistical model, the Strategic Unit headed by Shlomi Zaken, the Finance Department headed by CFO Yaniv Cohen, the Head of the Budget and Finance Department Shalom Stern, the Head of the Academic Administration Mirit Stav-Mevorach, the Deans and Associate-Deans, and the two Vice-Rectors, Prof. Lilach Sagiv and Prof. Avi-Hai Hovav. See a more detailed document on the model here.
Pooling scholarships for research students
Funding research students is one of the most important goals of the Hebrew University. In the coming academic year, we will continue to direct tens of millions of NIS for this important project, despite the significant budgetary challenges we face (see the next section). More details on the criteria appear in the document, put together by the Vice-Rector for Research, Prof. Avi-Hai Hovav.
2023-2024 Budget challenges
The economic situation in Israel and worldwide has serious consequences for the Hebrew University budget. For example, the war in Ukraine and other global events led to an increase in inflation and the consumer price index, resulting in an increase of tens of millions of NIS in various expenses, contrary to forecasts. This massive increase in expenses places a great burden on the University's budget and is a real challenge for 2023-2024. Therefore, we have informed all the faculties that it will be necessary to make a 5% horizontal cut in their work budgets. A similar cut—and sometimes a greater one—will be made in all University units.
On the positive side, we can note an improvement in our performance in the CHE model, which resulted in an increase in revenue. This year, the CHE model was updated, for both teaching and research. Our revenues in both parts of the model have increased nominally, but we are still learning the details of the model to fully understand its meaning. Among other things, more weight is given to the quality of the journals in which our articles are published. This update is consistent with our approach, which emphasizes excellence in research. In this regard, I would like to mention that we recently finished a large project analyzing our scientific publications, led by Ari Stone from the Strategic Unit, and Shlomi Zaken, Head of the Unit. This coming year we will hold meetings with all the University Units to present the findings of the analysis. The main goal of these meetings is to increase awareness of various aspects concerning the publication stages and their impact on the University's status.
Congratulations and welcome to the new faculty members who have recently joined the ranks of the Hebrew University.
We wish the best of luck to the new faculty members who are joining us in 2023-2024. See here a list of the new faculty members.
Research Opportunities Portal
The International Office has recently launched an innovative virtual platform, the Research Opportunities Portal, designed to support the recruitment efforts of HUJI researchers seeking outstanding Israeli and international graduate and doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows.
Researchers will be able to publish relevant research opportunities in a single step, by completing an online form. I encourage our researchers to take advantage of this new portal as a valuable resource in the recruitment of new research students.
To access the portal, please click here.
To view the research proposals page on the International Office website, click here.
Best regards,
Tamir