The Move toward Convergence — Developments in the Higher Education System in Israel

Abstract

The paper deals with the unique relationship evolving between the two major categories of higher learning institutions in Israel: the country's universities and the colleges that were established in their shadow. Following an introduction to the history of higher education in Israel, stressing the initial dominance of the research universities, the paper traces developments of the unique dialogue that has developed in recent decades between universities and colleges in Israel by discussing the changes in goals, curricula, orientation to vocational education, organizational structure and development, and academic independence. The changing relations between these two types of institutions highlight the system's flexibility, the power of the institutions' own interpretation of their roles, and the system-wide resistance to a binary system imposed in a top-down policymaking process. Following a review of these changes, the authors offer the case of the Academic College of Judea and Samaria as a point in case, exploring the permeability of the boundaries between university and college institutions in Israel. The paper concludes that the initial intention of the Council for Higher Education to establish a dual system of research universities and popular colleges is gradually converging into a monistic system following the research university concept and model.