ON ISRAELI ASSESSMENT OF ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES OF HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM

In 2008 a civil, apolitical movement was formed to save the Israeli educational system. After a decade, expert and analytical centers keep signaling serious challenges and contradictions directly related to schisms in the society. Worldwide COVID-19 crisis has only made the situation worse. During the pandemic, the number of first-year students in universities and colleges increased sharply, while the country's job market already had had a high percentage of "over-educated" labor. University and college graduates have problems with a job search; there is a drift from Israel of educated and qualified personnel abroad, mainly to the US. Specialists note the low quality of education, a disproportion in the ratio of the number of students and teaching staff, the problem of unequal access to higher education for students from different social strata and ethnic groups. In Israel, case analysis in the educational system is carried out by expert and analytical centers which interact on these issues with corresponding governmental authorities issuing their own annual reports. Sometimes they highlight different points in their assessments. But the fact is that a number of essential problems have not yet been resolved. The Israeli leadership understands that higher education needs to be reformed and adapted to the needs of a country located in extremely sensitive region and seeks to be ranked high in a competitive environment in the international arena.