Why more Arab Israelis go to university
In the past decade, Israel has seen a significant rise in the number of Israeli-Arab students, but high numbers of Israeli-Arab students have also quit university.
Afif Abu Much wrote in Al-Monitor on Oct. 24 that the Arab public has succeeded in forcing its will on the leadership of the Joint List — the predominantly Arab unified list — by introducing a new discourse on the issue of inclusion, which barely existed over the last few years. This reflects a desire among the Arab population to integrate into Israeli society and become part of the circle of decision-makers in the country. One of the reasons for this shift is the growing influence of the younger generation, which draws on the higher education it is receiving. According to figures provided by the Council for Higher Education in Israel, the number of Arab students in higher education more than doubled over the last decade, growing from over 22,000 in 2008 to over 48,000 in 2018. Arab students now studying toward an undergraduate degree make up about 17% of the entire student body in Israel and are just short of the percentage of Arab Israelis in the total population of Israel (21%). The same data shows that the number of students who work toward undergraduate and master's degrees is rising.
The Council for Higher Education in Israel has been promoting higher education among Israel’s Arab population through a number of means. One of the most important is the Ruad Program, which offers information, counseling and guidance to potential students, as well as help in preparing for the psychometric test and tours of the various schools. Similarly, hundreds of scholarships are granted to Arab students every year based on criteria such as socioeconomic background and high scores.
The aforementioned figures do not include another 10,000 Israeli-Arab students studying abroad, particularly in universities in the West Bank, Turkey and Europe.
Ayman Agbaria of Haifa University told Haaretz on Oct. 22 that while this growth is welcome, it does not necessarily indicate a sharp increase in the quality of education in the Arab society. He says an assessment based on parameters such as quality of research and integration into key positions in academia would show a different picture. One of the factors on which Agbaria bases his conclusions is the number of Arab doctoral students, who make up 6.7% of all doctoral students in Israel. Nevertheless, there is also a sharp increase from 2008 when just 3.5% of doctoral students were Arabs, he said.
