Ben-Gurion U. balances academic standards with reservists’ needs in war’s second year

BEERSHEBA — The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev campus was filled with students and staff returning for the official start of the new academic year on Sunday morning. It was a crisp, sunny day, and outside the centrally located Zlotowski Student Center, students gathered around tables set up for various groups and organizations, laughing and greeting each other while munching on free popcorn.

Another row of tables displayed the wares of local artisans and merchants, including one vendor with hundreds of vintage vinyl records. As some browsed the offerings, a crowd of some 60 people sitting on beanbags in a grassy area listened intently as two relatives of hostages spoke of their experiences trying to secure the freedom of their loved ones and the other hostages still held in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

The start of the new semester was getting underway after a trying year of war — and there is no end in sight. A small but visible number of students were toting machine guns, indicating they, like many thousands of Israeli university students over the last year, were engaging in studies while simultaneously serving in the IDF reserves.

“It’s very challenging, but I always believe in myself,” Yarden, a young civil engineering student, told The Times of Israel.

Wearing a backpack and carrying an M-16 with an attached grenade launcher, Yarden, laughing and standing in a circle of friends, added that because of the reality of reserve service, “Last year, some succeeded and some didn’t, even though the university tried to help us. I have friends who flunked out.”

How to ensure successful studies while a large number of university students and staff are periodically serving in the IDF reserves is a major concern for administrators, something universities have attempted to address since the massive call-up last year in the wake of the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

The number of student reservists is unprecedented – a full 30 percent of registered students, according to an estimate provided by the Association of University Heads. Israel has around 300,000 post-high school, higher education students, including those registered at various academies and academic colleges.

During the last academic year and continuing into the current one, universities have provided specialized assistance packages for reservists, which include financial help, private tutors and flexible exam schedules, among other benefits.

The last academic year was also pushed back due to the war. It was to have begun on October 15, 2023, but after a series of delays, it only officially began on December 31, with shortened semesters and a special summer session implemented at most universities.

This year, most universities began on Sunday, November 3, although the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar-Ilan University began classes the previous week. The University of Haifa and the Technion, citing the security situation in the north, are to open the new academic year on Sunday, November 10.

Around the campus

In a large grassy area interspersed with trees for shade and a small, bubbling brook, a group of nursing students were catching up and waiting for class to begin. “We’ve gotten used to the situation, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in the university” that the year will go smoothly, said Liron, a 3rd-year student.

The nursing program, run jointly with nearby Soroka Medical Center, contains a large number of Arab students, “and the last year was a little difficult” due to tensions in class after October 7, she said, something she hopes will be easier this year.

(According to the university, there were no major incidents between Jewish and Arab students over the last year and the administration worked to ease tension between the population. About 15% of BGU students are Arab Israelis — Bedouins from the south or Muslim or Christian Arabs from the Galilee.)

Arab Israeli students were a visible minority as this reporter explored the campus. Two hijab-clad students, who said they were studying to be doctors, declined to be interviewed, but Mohammad, a computer science student, explained he was at BGU for his first day after transferring from the Technion.

He said he switched schools due to the ongoing rocket fire in the Haifa area, which would “make learning impossible this year.”

“It seems nice here,” he added, “but I don’t know my way around.” He had brought along his cousin to accompany him while he figured out his new environment.

Sitting on a bench nearby were Tomer and Ofer, two chemical engineering students. Although neither had been called to serve in the reserves, the phenomenon made a big impact on their program, Tomer said.

Last year the reservists “struggled a lot” and so “there is a fear that they will be neglected,” he said.

His friend Ofer recalled that he had been in Sinai during the Sukkot holiday in 2023, only to hear about the October 7 onslaught by Hamas on the south of Israel, in which 1,200 people were murdered and 251 taken hostage to Gaza.

Ofer was “among the thousands” of Israelis who streamed back into Israel immediately after, and then with the delay in beginning the academic year, everything “was a balagan [a mess],” he said.

“I hope this year will be more relaxed,” he added.

Several dogs, wearing special vests and being led by students, were an unusual feature on campus, part of a program in which students receive academic credit while learning how to train the canines to become seeing-eye dogs.

Bar, a second-year computer science student, had enrolled in the program because she hoped taking care of a dog would help keep her grounded during what she said was sure to be “a challenging year.”

“There is so much uncertainty,” she said while petting her charge. She and her friend Maayan, also a computer science student, had both done reserve duty last year but not as much as many of their friends, and not in combat positions, they said.

However, in Maayan’s case, she was in and out of the reserves multiple times, then gave birth, and also had to study during the additional summer semester, making the last year “very, very intense,” she said, laughing.

“We need a lot of optimism to keep going,” she said.

Student-soldiers

At Ben-Gurion University, out of a student body of some 20,000, around 6,500 students were called up over the last year, with 52% of those serving in total over 100 days and another 23% serving 61-99 days, according to statistics provided to The Times of Israel. The vast majority, some 82%, were undergraduate students.

The university doesn’t yet know how many students will be called up during their studies, or for how long, but “I won’t be surprised if we’re back up into the thousands, particularly with everything going on in the north or whichever way you look,” said BGU rector Prof. Chaim Hames, meeting The Times of Israel over coffee in his book-lined office.

“Each reservist has a different story, but when you have more than 6,000 stories, you have to work out a general framework,” he said.

This entails “a fine balance between making it easier for them in the sense that we give binary grades or tutoring or whatever else, but making sure that the degree itself… will give them the skills they need when they exit the university or continue doing advanced degrees.”

“I think we were successful in helping as many of these students as possible,” Hames said, but acknowledged receiving “tons of complaints” from reservists.

“You have individual cases, which is always heartbreaking and you understand the difficulties,” he said. “We weren’t always able to give the answers that maybe those particular students would have liked, because we thought that would impact the quality of the degree.”

Trying times

This year, the university’s efforts to help reservist students will continue, building on what was learned over the last year, he said.

“We’re doing as much as we can to make sure that those who bear the burden of this war are helped,” he said. However, the new academic year could potentially be “a lot worse,” Hames added bluntly.

October 7 was a signature event that “defined everything we did” and the entire university community “coalesced to work together to help the students,” he said. Now, “We’re seeing our students being called up again and again… people are running out of steam and energy.”

“I think that this academic year is going to be more difficult,” Hames continued. “In the classrooms, we might find a lot more stress, more outbursts. A lot of things that were buried as we concentrated on getting through the year will now surface.”

The full impact will be felt in the years to come, Hames said, including the economic impact of a generation of university graduates doing their studies during wartime. For example, of the BGU reservists, some 40% are engineering students, and the university trains “about a third of the engineers in the country,” he said.

Because of the difficulties, “it’s quite possible that many of them will spend a year longer in the system. We’re trying to avoid that… [but] if there are hundreds who don’t finish their degree on time, that’s hundreds less coming out into the workforce” from just one university, Hames said.

Besides the reservists, “quite a number of whom have been wounded,” the BGU student body contains survivors of the Nova party massacre and others directly affected by October 7, as well as evacuees who spent much of the last year living in hotels, he said.

In total, “the university has lost 115, including those who have fallen in the war, either student, staff or first-degree relatives,” which has had “a very powerful impact,” Hames said.

Additionally, hundreds from the BGU academic and administrative staff have served in the reserves, or have children serving in the IDF or in some cases a combination of both, and “also have to process the war,” Hames said.

Because of its location in the south, “since 2007 or 2008 we have been used to incoming missiles and operations and everything else,” so after October 7 “we went into survival mode as we’ve done numerous times… this year people are going to be more reflective. No one expected the war to go on this long,” he said.

Nonetheless, BGU has had “a growth in enrollment, which I’m not sure I totally understand, but I’m happy about it,” he said.

“The ability to have an almost normal academic year shows incredible resilience. We’re not going anywhere, we’re not giving up. We’re continuing to develop and looking forward to a much brighter and better future in a democratic country.”