Higher Education in Israel at a Crossroads: The Effect of Regional Colleges on the Map of Higher Education in Israel

Abstract

A historical review of institutions of higher education in Israel reveals far-reaching changes in all aspects of higher education since the first university was established in Mandatory Palestine in 1925, the most salient of these being the increasing demand for higher education in recent decades. This study attempts to determine whether the present system of higher education in Israel is progressing toward a binary system, characterized by a clear division of labor between universities and colleges directed toward different target populations, or whether development is oriented toward a converging system, with the various academic institutions growing more similar to one another. The findings of the study, based on a survey of students at two distinct institutions, confirm that a similar model operates in both types of higher education institutions, according to which students' sense of academic success is the product of a student-centric learning process. In this process, organizational attributes, including orientation, experience and social and academic climates, interplay with student demographic and psychosocial attributes, including self-efficacy, to produce students' sense of academic success.