Abraham Yogev

The Stratification of Israeli Universities: Implications for Higher Education Policy.

Despite the growing body of literature on the stratification of the university systems in the US and the UK, the treatment of all universities in countries where the system of higher education is publicly controlled tends to remain monolithic. This is certainly true of Israel, where all universities and colleges are regulated by the Council for Higher Education (CHE), which considers all universities the “first layer” of higher education versus the “second layer” of degree-granting colleges. We claim that the six major Israeli universities – the five regular universities and the Technion – are highly stratified into three elite institutions, aiming at academic excellence, versus three “target universities” aimed at specific or peripheral populations. Drawing on periodical university figures published by the Central Bureau of Statistics between 1985–1996, we show that the growth of various academic fields and of graduate studies has been limited in the target universities. Subsequently, their student composition differs from that of the three elite universities. They have larger than expected proportions of older students, women, and minority students (Sephardic Jews and Arabs). Three implications of these stratification patterns for higher education policy in publicly controlled systems are discussed: the extent and stability of university stratification in these systems; the benefits and limitations of this stratification process; and its impact on further developments in higher education, mainly the expansion of degree-granting colleges.

Diversification and Inequality in Higher Education: A Comparison of Israel and the United States.

This article explores how the structure of higher education in the United States and Israel mediates the relationship among race/ethnicity, social origins, and postsecondary outcomes. On the basis of differences in how the two systems of higher education have developed, the authors anticipated that inequality in college attendance will be greater in Israel, while inequality in the type of college or university one attends will be greater in the United States. They found that students in the United States are more likely to attend college than are their Israeli counterparts. Contrary to their expectations, however, inequality in the chances of attendance is similar across these nations, if not slightly greater in the United States. Inequality in the types of institutions that students attend appears greater in the United States, but the contours of ethnic inequality in college destinations are markedly different across these two contexts.

Students, Schools, and Enrollment in Science and Humanity Courses in Israeli Secondary Education.

This article examines the deteriorating status of the humanities and social sciences versus mathematics and the sciences in the curriculum of Israeli high schools. We examine this tendency by conducting a multi-level analysis of the effect of school and individual characteristics on inequality in curriculum specialization on a sample of academic-track 12th-graders in 1989. The main findings are (a) more able students, males, and members of the privileged Jewish ethnic group in Israel tend to specialize in mathematics and the sciences, and (b) students’ characteristics are the major determinant of course-taking in mathematics and the sciences, whereas school policy is central regarding the humanities and social sciences. The article discusses social implications of the findings.

Bringing order to chaos? Educational policy in Israel in the postmodern era

Over the past decade, education has perhaps been the aspect of public policy-making in Israel most heavily influenced by the vicissitudes of the postmodern era. The social and personal uncertainty associated with life in the postmodern world, and the resulting chaotic social order exert a direct influence on schools, which, in turn, influence public policy-making with regard to the education system. Ostensibly, there is a certain paradox inherent in the attempt to set a national educational policy in the postmodern era. Essentially, it is tantamount to introducing order in a chaotic world on the basis of public and managerial priorities, particularly in the case of education systems characterized by centralized administrative supervision by the state, as is the case in the Israeli education system. Fox and Miller, who address the issue from the general perspective of public administration, indeed recommend dispersion of the organizational bureaucracies responsible for policy-making in the postmodern era. Alternatively, they propose that ad hoc public committees be established to address specific issues and to provide genuine involvement by rank-and-file citizens. However, Utopia is still far from reality, and governmental and other bureaucracies continue to set public policy even in the postmodern era. Pending fundamental change in this field, it is worth examining how policy-making processes in the public domain are influenced by the complexities of the postmodern era. The present article deals with the influence of postmodern conditions on educational policy in Israel over the past decade, particularly since the beginning of the 1990s. During the first half of the 1990s, when the Ministry of Education was headed by ministers from the Meretz party (a party combining liberal, social-democratic and socialist elements), numerous reforms and changes were introduced. Those in the Ministry of Education who planned this process of educational reform even referred

The Development of Two-Year Technological Colleges in Israel and its Implications for Stratification in Higher Education

Similar to community colleges in the United States, the Israeli tertiary system includes two-year technological colleges, which provide students with a labor-market relevant qualification. Nonetheless, unlike the community colleges, the technological colleges are not considered to be part of the higher education system and their transfer function is irregular and confined. In order to understand these differences, the chapter has two complementary objectives: (a) to describe the emergence and development of technological colleges and (b) to evaluate the implications for social inequality in access to higher education in Israel. We use a mixed-methods research design, including analyzing primary and secondary sources describing the official policy and public discourse around these colleges (qualitative/historical research) and comparing students attending academic institutions to students attending technological colleges and students across different fields of study offered by these colleges (quantitative research). Drawing on Phillips (2004) model for policy attraction in education, we find that technological colleges in Israel were based on the Dutch HTS model, while the founding of these colleges was initiated by local impulse. The implementation of the technological colleges in the Israeli context was shaped by a cultural logic for higher education that emphasizes research and knowledge production, creating a binary tertiary system. Drawing on sociological literature on diversification and stratification in tertiary education, we find that technological colleges attract more students from disadvantaged groups and more students with relatively low academic ability than academic institutions. In addition, within technological colleges, students from advantaged background and higher academic ability are more likely to study in more prestigious fields of study. These findings suggest that if policy makers in Israel aspire to increase access to higher education, they should rethink policy instruments and cultivate the transfer function of technological colleges. This is among the first studies to examine technological colleges in Israel and we conclude with different directions for further research.

Book ReviewsChildren of Perestroika in Israel. edited by Tamar Horowitz Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1999. 227 pp.

We know little about the nature of education in colonized areas—about how the colonial powers organized educational systems and institutions, about what was taught and how students learned, and about how the colonized responded to the educational institutions imposed on them by the colonizers. This book, which contains 11 previously published essays by the late Gail Paradise Kelly, helps us to understand the nature of colonial education in a particularly underresearched area— French Indochina and West Africa. Gail Kelly’s work in this field, cut short by her untimely death in 1991, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the realities of colonial education. We are indebted to David H. Kelly, Gail Paradise Kelly’s husband and a historian, for bringing these essays to the attention of the comparative education community. The chapters in this book provide a concrete analysis of French colonial educational policy and practice. They are all based on original archival research that provides the reader with both vignettes of colonial history and interpretation of the topics considered. Before postcolonial studies became popular in the 1990s, with its emphasis on understanding relationships between those with power and those without, and recognizing that the colonized and other dominated groups had their own perspectives and reactions to their circumstances, scholars like Gail Kelly, Remi Clignet, and a few others were building a basis for this later work. At least in the area of education, there is little research available on the realities of education under colonial rule—an interesting exception is E. Patricia Tsurumi’s Japanese Colonial Education in Taiwan, 1895-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). There are also excellent studies of the macrorealities of education, such as Philip Foster’s Education and Social Change in Ghana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). French Colonial Education considers French educational policy, educational practice, and the reactions of the colonized to these policies and practices in the two major areas of French colonial domination during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Vietnam and West Africa. The bulk of the book is devoted to Vietnam. The focus of the research reported in this book is the development and implementation of French educational policy and the reactions of the colonized to it. Concrete examples are provided in regard to the role of teachers, the development and use of textbooks, and the nature of classroom interactions. In all cases, Kelly is careful to show how policy was made, how it was implemented, and how it was received in the schools. We are reminded that the far-flung empires of the colonial powers were in fact loosely governed, and immense latitude was given to the administrators. We are also reminded how unimportant schooling was in the scheme of things. The colonial

49.00 (paper). ISBN 0‐7618‐1313‐6.

Problems of instrumentation in cross-cultural survey research have been of increasing concern during the recent decade. Some of these problems are due to the unfamiliarity of populations of less developed countries (LDCs) with survey techniques, and to cultural variations which cause specific response biases (Brislin et al, 1973). These problems are more intense in studies concentrating on rural populations of LDCs, which require a greater sophistication in instrumentation. Solutions suggested in the past, such as the use of &dquo;story-like&dquo; items (Elder, 1973), have applied mainly to the measurement of general attitudes among rural respondents in LDCs. This paper is concerned with the cross-cultural use of survey techniques for the assessment of organizational goals. The aim of the paper is to assess the goals of rural youth organizations in two African countries: Malawi and the Ivory Coast. Recent research on organizational goals has emphasized the study of &dquo;operative goals&dquo;, the actual operating policies of organizations, in contrast to the classical focus on &dquo;official