Universities gear up for new academic year in shadow of ongoing war
A significant portion of registered students are also expected to serve as IDF reservists, many for a second year in a row
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
Israel’s major universities are preparing for the new academic year, with most scheduled to begin the semester next Sunday, November 3. The opening marks the second year in a row in which a significant percentage of university students and staff are expected to serve as IDF reservists.
The last academic year was to have begun on October 15, 2023, but was delayed several times due to the October 7 outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Eventually, learning officially began on December 31, with shortened semesters and a special summer session implemented at most universities.
Due to the large number of student reservists – a full 30 percent of registered students, according to an estimate provided by the Association of University Heads earlier this year – universities during the last academic year provided assistance packages for reservists, which included financial help, private tutors and flexible exam schedules, among other benefits.
These policies, independently decided upon and implemented by individual universities, are expected to continue during the new academic year. The University of Haifa on Monday announced students serving in the reserves would be exempt from student housing fees, a continuance of last year’s policy.
Also on Monday, Bar-Ilan University announced a “learning assistant” AI program, based around ChatGPT, developed especially to help student-soldiers keep up with their studies while in uniform.
In a message to students this week, Hebrew University rector Prof. Tamir Sheafer said, “Last year we built an exceptional support system — academic, financial, and emotional — to help reservists and their spouses, as well as those displaced from their homes, to successfully complete the academic year.”
Despite immense difficulties, “most students managed to successfully finish the year. We know the challenges have not ended. We will continue to provide support to all students who need it in the coming year as well,” Sheafer said.
The Association of University Heads, in a Monday message to The Times of Israel, said it was “still collating” statistics about student reservists for the new year, but according to data provided by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, some 6,500 students at the university served in the reserves over the last year, out of a student body of 20,000, with 52% of these serving over 100 days in total.
Israel has around 300,000 post-high school, higher education students, including those registered at various academies and academic colleges.
The system has been further stressed by the thousands of university faculty and staff who also have been called up for reserve duty, sometimes for months at a time. According to Ben-Gurion, 40% of its engineering faculty served in the IDF reserves over the last year.
A Monday article in the Hebrew-language economic journal The Marker, citing statistics provided by the Association of University Heads, noted that a full 40% of students in the fields of tech, medicine, science and computers have served in the reserves over the last year. In some cases, the percentages are even higher, for example at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where 51% of medical students did reserve duty, according to the report.
The ongoing issue of student reservists, especially among those who are preparing for careers in tech, is a cause for concern, said industry veteran and government adviser Dedi Perlmutter, according to the article.
It is “absolutely clear” that despite the measures the universities have provided, reservists will take longer to complete their degrees and have more difficulty making the “transition from university to working in the industry,” which will “reduce the number of people entering the labor market in a few years… we need to consider how to deal with this,” Perlmutter said.
Although November 3 is the general start date, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel’s largest, is set to begin the new semester on Tuesday, October 29, and Bar-Ilan University is to begin on Wednesday, October 30. The University of Haifa, citing the security situation in the north, announced last week that the opening of the new academic year would be delayed until Sunday, November 10.
This week, most universities are to hold academic orientations and other activities for new students.
