The second point that Kraut raises astonishes me. Is nationalism really disintegrating? Is the Israeli national identity—with its homeland, language, and borders—an exception in today’s world? Yugoslavia was divided up into several nation states; Czechoslovakia broke into two states; the Soviet Union broke up into many separate countries; the Basques and Corsicans aspire to independence, or at least increased autonomy; even the Scots are forming their own parliament. Over 60 percent of Americans do not hold valid passports and have never been outside their country. Which borders, exactly, does Kraut believe are becoming “less significant”? Of course there are international organizations, but they do not cancel out nationalism. An attachment to one’s homeland, language, and national identity is a primal bond, one that exists even among Swedes and Norwegians. Thus, it is only natural that the State of Israel, which, in the early twentieth century, housed less than half a percent of the entire Jewish people, is today home to almost 50 percent of them. It is only natural to forgo the virtuality and mobility of one’s identity in exchange for something tangible and real. Nationalism is not crumbling, just as the family unit is not disintegrating. And, if Israel resolutely determines the extent of its territory (according to its 1967 borders, and not its 1948 borders, as Kraut erroneously writes), the Jewish nation—a nation that has lost over 90 percent of its people throughout the course of history, whether through assimilation or, in modern times, on account of the Holocaust—may be spared the disastrous repercussions of a virtual identity.

 

To the Editors:

Marla Braverman analyzes the Israeli brain drain in an insightful essay (“Losing Our Minds,” AZURE 32, Spring 2008) and concludes that “the absence of adequate incentives and competitive conditions is precisely what drives talented academics and scientists out of Israel and into countries whose market economies ensure them greater compensation.” She is absolutely right that salaries, as well as scholarly and scientific facilities in Israeli universities, are not competitive in the global market, and that this must be ameliorated if not entirely rectified. It is precisely because universities compete for scarce human, financial, and other resources, and because academics respond to financial and other incentives, that universities can be analyzed using market concepts. Thus, it is clear that economic considerations are essential in assessing the causes of and remedies for the Israeli brain drain. The difficult question is to what extent and in what manner should neoliberal market models—successfully employed by the Israeli Treasury in many areas—be used to guide the funding and management of Israeli universities? Calling for adequate incentives and competitive conditions is one thing, but requiring universities to function like businesses is quite another.

Global competition for academic talent is an indisputable fact, as is the need for world-class facilities—libraries, laboratories, support staff—for nurturing world-class scholarship. But neither of these facts necessarily implies that Israeli research universities can effectively operate on a business model which balances budgets by producing and selling a good. While some Israeli colleges are able to cover all or most of their costs from tuition, they provide only a small fraction of Israeli academic degrees in selected academic disciplines. The market model will not work for Israeli universities at large.

Universities produce two “commodities”: diplomas and ideas, which together support expertise, construed broadly as specialized and advanced knowledge and capability.

While diplomas are sold, the full market value of a university degree is realized over a lifetime, and cannot be sold at its discounted lifetime value the way one can sell a car or a tomato. The value of a university degree accrues to society as well as to the graduate over a long period of time. A degree is a public good as well as a private good: The individual engineer generates more wealth than he receives in salary by driving the growth of the economy. The social worker or high school teacher contributes well-being and social values, which are immeasurable in currency. And what about the value of the scholar of Hebrew literature or Jewish philosophy in the reborn Jewish state? It is both unfair and economically unfeasible to ask a student to finance the full cost of producing a commodity—the university degree—which is both a public and private good.

Universities’ second commodity is the “idea.” Ideas are sometimes economically profitable, but mostly ideas influence how people think about themselves, their society, and the world. Such influence is usually gradual, even glacial, in its advance. Many ideas emerge, are studied and argued about, and consume academic resources, only to be rejected as unfruitful. Nevertheless, the costly process of sifting and weeding is unavoidable. Without substantial and patient effort sustained over years, ideas will fail to blossom.

Although universities are a great investment for society, they cannot be run on a profit-and-loss investment model. Universities cannot support themselves directly by market forces.

This analysis of universities’ peculiar market situation sheds light on the role of competition in nurturing academic excellence. It is a common truth that economic competition can, and often does, lead to improved quality of products at lower cost. The process occurs when consumers are able to select among commodities and choose low price and high quality. This certainly works, at least over the medium and long term, in the market for computers and related information technology, for instance. But it can’t work for the commodities produced by universities: diplomas and new ideas. The consumer is too diffuse—society at large—and quality is too difficult to measure. Nonetheless, universities have developed a range of mechanisms to monitor and improve the quality of their products, such as internal and external review of academic programs and the long and exhausting process of tenure and advancement, in which the academic candidate is severely measured against his best peers from around the world. These mechanisms, though not flawless and subject to continual evaluation and revision, have created and maintained Israeli universities in the global forefront of academic research.

And what about global outsourcing? Universities have been highly globalized for a long time: Research collaborations are international, new ideas compete and are tested internationally, and evaluation of academic personnel is done in a global framework. The globalization of intellectual talent is here to stay, so why not harness it to Israel’s advantage by outsourcing our needs for university graduates? Israel could buy a substantial amount of engineering talent from India, hire scholars of Judaica from Brandeis and Yeshiva universities, even import social workers from Europe. But would we really want to? The viability of a country depends on its ability to educate and assimilate its young people constructively into society, providing them with challenging and rewarding opportunities to realize their personal potentials. Outsourcing for intellectual talent would significantly reduce the size of Israeli universities and leave talented and ambitious native Israelis with little choice but to leave the country. Even if large-scale outsourcing made sense financially, it would be the Zionist dream gone astray.