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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014”an institution that is not a university”\u2014was 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\u2014training for professional occupations\u2014as if these were academic disciplines.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n