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Hays, T. PhDs: Israel also trains plenty. Nature 473, 284 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/473284c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/473284c
Shai Berlin
Egypt, a major member of Middle-Eastern countries, is said to struggle to survive in times where budgets (from either public or private sectors) are limited (Cyranoski et al, 2011). But what Middle-Eastern country isn?t struggling with its Science/Academic money-flow? For example, in 2010 Israel invested less than 900 million NIS on Science, in comparison with over 50 billion NIS on Defense and homeland security, which is argued to hamper academic progress (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2010). Despite the lack of funding, Israel still produces a high number of publications each year, but this has not been included in the thorough analysis presented by Cyranoski and colleagues (Cyranoski et al, 2011). However, the authors present an impressive number of Egyptian PhD students and argue that no other Middle-Eastern country produces as much. But, with a population of over 80 million people in Egypt, this impressive number now represents less than 0.04% of PhD students in the country (Hays, 2011). Therefore, it seems as if the main issue that should be presented to readers regarding Egypt?s struggle to survive and low percentage of PhD students is its poor quality of education and high illiteracy rates, rather than poor funding (Yahia, 2011).
Besides the monetary problems, Egypt is claimed to be a well-oiled PhD-producing machine without any competitors in the Middle-East (Cyranoski et al, 2011). This might be true if Israel is taken-out of this equation, but why should Israel be excluded from the Middle-East? It is baffling how Israel, on the one hand, can be on the front of every newspaper in the world regarding Middle-Eastern political battleground, but when it comes to academic and social achievements; Israel is, seemingly, left aside. An example for such ambiguity can be seen by simply looking at the title of one of Nature?s daughter journals named Nature Middle East. This journal claims to bring ?Emerging Science in the Arab world? and causes great confusion to readers: Is Israel not situated in the Middle East? And if so, is Israel thereby Arab? Therefore, dear reader in order to avoid any doubt and further confusion- Israel is definitely situated in the Middle-East and is, unquestionably, not an Arab country.
Central Bureau of Statistics SoI (2010)
Cyranoski D, Gilbert N, Ledford H, Nayar A, Yahia M (2011) Education: The PhD factory. Nature 472: 276-279
Hays T (2011) PhDs: Israel also trains plenty. Nature 473: Published online
Yahia M (2011) Arab education lags behind world, says UNESCO. Nature Middle East