In the early 1990s, the State of Israel decided to establish academic colleges. However, this decision did not include a distinction or division of roles between a university and a college, even though the importance of differentiation is self evident. The damage caused by this omission has burdened Israel’s higher education system ever since.
Prof. Nehemia Friedland analyzes, in his position paper “The Essence and Mission of the University,” the differences between a university and a college. Friedland, who served on the Council for Higher Education in the 1990s, argues that the CHE’s definition of a college—”an institution that is not a university”—was a fundamental mistake that blurred the distinction between colleges and universities. This mistake resulted in a higher education system in which everyone tries to do everything: colleges aspire to resemble or become universities, while universities expand their activities into areas suited to colleges—training for professional occupations—as if these were academic disciplines.
Examples such as turning practical professions like nursing and optometry into ostensibly academic disciplines and applying academic models to their instruction provide a basis for broad criticism of the system’s structure. Friedland also supports his arguments by comparing Israel’s higher education system to those in Germany, California, and other countries that maintain a clear distinction between research universities and “applied” institutions.
He concludes by presenting the need for a reform that would redefine the missions of the different institutions: research universities that advance the cultivation and transmission of academic knowledge for its own sake, and colleges with a practical orientation that train the professionals required by the labor market.
Explore the position paper on the Samuel Neaman Institute website