10/10/2021

Sharp increase in the number of students in 2020-2021 – primarily bachelor’s degree students

A sharp increase in the total number of students took place in 2020-2021 – almost 24,000 additional students relative to 2019-2020, 17,780 of whom attend bachelor’s degree studies. In 2021-2022, according to the estimates of higher education institutions, an increase of approximately 14,000 students is expected (approximately 4% relative to 2020-2021).

336,330 students attended 59 academic institutions in Israel in 2020-2021, including:[1] 254,630 bachelor’s degree students, 68,885 master’s degree students, 11,855 PhD candidates and 960 students attended certification studies[2]. Following the stability that characterized the higher education system over the past decade, the total number of students has exhibited growth over the past two years, reaching, as stated, its peak in 2020-2021 among bachelor’s degree students (17,780), but a remarkable increase was also observed in the number of master’s degree students (5,665), and the number of PhD candidates has also increased by 211.

Multiannual Outlook – students by degree

  Total Bachelor’s Degree Master's degree PhD Certificate
1989-1990 89.060 68.250 16.100 3.910 800
1999-2000 199.240 159.560 31.340 6.650 1.690
2019-2020 283.850 221.810 50.270 10.570 1.200
2014-2015 307.300 235.300 59.700 10.890 1.410
2018-2019 308.340 232.365 63.200 11.720 1.055
2019-2020 312.660 236.850 63.220 11.645 945
2020-2021 336.330 254.630 68.885 11.855 960

 

 

Impressive achievement of the National Program for Strengthening Engineering and High-tech Professions: The 2020-2021 data indicate that this is the 4th year in a row in which engineering studies are the most studied program in Israel (bachelor’s degree – 38,011 students, constituting 18.2% of all bachelor’s degree students). Engineering studies have exceeded social studies, which over the years have been regarded as the largest academic field in Israel. The strengthening of high-tech professions has also been reflected by a more than 100% increase in the number of students who attend mathematics, statistics and computer science programs (20,062 students in 2020-2021 as opposed to 9122 students in 2009-2010). The number of students attending this field has increased by 1760 only over the past year. The aforementioned data indicate that one out of four students (approximately 26%) in Israel studies engineering and computer science, mathematics and statistics (approximately 58,070 students out of the 208,461 bachelor’s degree students).

Following a decrease in the number of law school students over the past decade (from 15,790 in 2009-2010 to 12,410 in 2019-2020, their number in 2020-2021 increased to 14,575 in 2020-2021, together with the general increase in the number of students that year). The number of students attending administration studies decreased from 22,232 (peak value) students in 2012-2013 to only 18,711 students in 2018-2019. In 2019-2020, their number increased to 20,105, and it soared to 22,822 in 2020-2021.

A substantial increase of 72% was also observed in the number of bachelor’s degree students who attended a paramedical studies program – from 8185 in 2009-2010 to 14,106 students in 2020-2021 – this increase was primarily caused by the large number of students who attended nursing studies (from 3000 to 7330 in that period of time).

 

Century Program – Humanities: Pursuant to the ongoing downward trend of the humanities in the past few years, which also continued in 2020-2021, the Steering Committee for The Humanities headed by Prof. Haviva Padia, a member of the Council for Higher Education, renewed its work and submitted its recommendations to the Planning and Budgeting Committee in March 2021. The recommendations of the Committee have defined the main objective as the facilitation of the humanities, including support for the various humanities programs, augmenting the humanities’ prestige, bringing the humanities to an interdisciplinary dialogue with all sciences, access to humanities courses by means of online platforms, and the expansion of humanities studies the incorporation of other disciplines, including natural sciences, technology and law.

The recommendations of the Committee, which were unanimously adopted by the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Council for Higher Education, address the creation of coherent and structured course clusters in the humanities that focus on the specialty level, and these will create new affinities between various fields of knowledge (encompassing at least 20 credits), whose purpose is to enrich the various faculties. The purpose of these clusters is to strengthen the humanities among students who do not attend humanities studies, in order to open a gateway for them to all of those fields of knowledge and to “soft skills” that are not available to them in the framework of their studies.

Moreover, the recommendations address the establishment of SLHSs (Science, Law, Humanities and Social Studies), which are new frameworks that will pool research and teaching in the context of advanced degrees and facilitate the creation of new and up-to-date bachelor’s degrees. The centers will be established at the faculties of the humanities and will serve as a center for interdisciplinary activity among researchers, research associates and students with scholarships. The SLHSs will serve as a center for communal interaction and discussion, as well as a center for online, inter-institutional and international learning. The SLHSs will reflect academic pluralism, interdisciplinary work, diversity and heterogeneity through the interaction with other disciplines that contribute to the development of new fields at the forefront of science. Each such center will include at least three interdisciplinary study programs, and will provide a center of attraction for researchers and advanced degree students. It was decided to enable the establishment of the SLHSs in one of two possible ways: One super-center within the faculty of the humanities, surrounding a key topic in the humanities that also incorporates other fields of the humanities. 2. An inter-faculty super-center that enables the combination of disciplines from various and diverse faculties.

Pursuant to the Planning and Budgeting Committee’s decision of March 18, 2021 and the decision of the Council for Higher Education of April 6, 2021 – the “Century Program for the Facilitation of the Humanities in the Framework of the 2016-2022 Multiannual Plan,” the Planning and Budgeting Committee approved, at its meeting of May 12, 2021, the issuance of an invitation (sent to the higher education institutions budgeted by the Planning and Budgeting Committee) to create clusters of courses that provide humanistic education and the creation of Centers for the Humanities. The invitation resulted in more than twenty selected clusters and four centers.

 

Considerable investments in high-tech - The PBC achieved the objective (student number growth): pursuant to Government Decision 2292 of January 15, 2017 on the subject of the “National Program for Augmenting Human Resources for the High-tech Industry,” the PBC and the CHE invested many resources in order to strengthen the high-tech field, by way of increasing the number of students in the following fields: computer science, electrical engineering and electronics, computer engineering and information system engineering. First, the PBC allocated NIS 700 million for this objective at universities, and it can now be said that the program was a great success. The PBC has achieved the objective presented by the Government: a 40% increase in the number of bachelor’s degree students in high-tech fields – dozens an increase of dozens of percent, and, according to projections, the increase will reach 80% in 2021-2022.

Second, the PBC allocated an additional NIS 150 million to augment high-quality human resources in advanced degrees and high-tech fields that will serve as reserves for future staff members, and the adjustment of the number of senior and junior staff members and teaching assistants, as a function of the increased number of students, and the creation of infrastructures for additional growth in the number of bachelor’s degree students in the future.

As a step that supplements the increased number of high-tech students, the PBC provided additional quotas to academic colleges that teach these fields.     The significant addition of quotas already leads to the achievement of requisite growth objectives in high-tech fields in the course of the previous multi-annual program, and these trends continued during the present multiannual program. In the last two years (the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 Budgets), additional quotas amounting to NIS 6 million were provided for each year so as to further support the increased number of students in this field.

Technological developments are forcing the academic world to make necessary adjustments, and, instead of the traditional division into various faculties, academia is working to remove barriers and create interdisciplinary study programs that provide its graduates with a diverse toolbox. For example, high-tech, exact sciences, economics and business administration students will be able to include philosophy, literature and art, history, cultural studies and more as part of their degrees.

Medicine: the number of first-year med school students at the four medical faculties at the universities was only 530 students in 2009-2010. Over the past decades, special efforts were made to resolve the considerable shortage of doctors, and an additional faculty of medicine was therefore opened in Safed (Bar-Ilan University) in 2011-2012, and the faculty of medicine at Ariel University was also opened in 2019-2020. The growth of existing faculties with respect to the 6-year programs and the opening of the 4-year med school programs lead resulted in 810 students beginning their medical studies in 2020-2021, who will join in the nation’s doctors and physicians after the end of their studies. Of course, these moves required the allocation of additional resources that were dedicated to this national task, and there is no doubt that we will have to continue to see growth in order to meet the needs of the health system, in collaboration with the Ministries of Health and Finance, and all of the agencies that are relevant to the success of this task.

Nursing: since the beginning of the last decade, the number of first-year nursing students was doubled: from 1000 in 2009-2010 to 2200 in 2020-2021, and there are currently 7300 students who are about to begin their bachelor’s degree in nursing through the 13 programs that operate both universities and colleges. This substantial increase is a reflection of the special efforts made by the higher education system by means of allocating additional resources and opening up new academic programs designed to reduce the existing shortage of nurses.

 

[1] Student numbers that appear in this report were received from the Central Bureau of Statistics in coordination with and pursuant to the instructions of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education.

[2] The numbers also include Open University students. Open University data do not include academic paper writers: 3203 bachelor’s degree students and 209 master’s degree students in 2020-2021. These data were reported by the Open University to the Central Bureau of Statistics for the first time in 2018-2019.

The number of students attending teaching certification studies refer to certification studies at universities.