Israel is on the cusp of a revolution in higher education

Each of these educational bodies serves diverse populations and regions although there is a strong thread of their leadership recognizing significant gaps—and genuine need—and turning their attention to fill them.

While the University of Haifa has cemented itself as a dynamic institution across multiple academic fields, at the beginning of the next academic year in the fall of 2025 it will accept the first cohort at its new Herta and Paul Amir School of Medicine.

Prof. Haim Bitterman will lead the school. When asked why he agreed to do so, he replied coyly, “Because they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse!” He quickly added: “I’m sure I can lead the team that can bring a partial solution. I thought it seemed a most important and rewarding exercise.” 

Bitterman has experience running hospitals and in 2015 he was appointed director-general of Assuta Ashdod Medical Center. “My grandchildren tell me that I’m a builder,” he told JNS. “Life brought me opportunities to build stuff and it’s great fun to know you can gather forces to build something new.”

The six-year program will start with some 64 students in the initial intake, with teaching conducted in groups of eight students. Both Bitterman and Gideon Herscher, vice president for Transformational Philanthropy and Global Resource Development, acknowledged that the school would likely need to grow later, and also require the addition of another school, slated for completion by the end of the decade. 

There were a large number of applications—in fact, it was massively oversubscribed, highlighting the potential that resides in Haifa and its environs. “We’re about two decades too late,” lamented Herscher, “but I think it’s serendipitous the opportunity surfaced, as we’ve been pursuing this for more than a decade. The north is more ready than ever to receive medical care.”

It would be trite to suggest the timing of the medical school’s opening is propitious because it’s clear that a great deal of thought and preparation have gone into identifying trends—both in terms of medical practitioners—and the nature and age of the patients they treat.

Bitterman made an interesting observation, namely that the young doctors and medical professionals who emigrated from the Former Soviet Union in the great wave of aliyah in the late 1980s and 1990s are now rapidly approaching retirement age.

This, among other issues—such as the Ministry of Health’s not recognizing (correctly, in Bitterman’s opinion) accreditation from a number of medical schools abroad—means there is a dire shortage of qualified doctors in Israel. The situation, according to Bitterman, is particularly acute in the country’s north. 

While the first cohort of medical students is in the process of finalization, both Bitterman and Herscher were aware and sensitive to how prospective medical practitioners of the future could be attracted to the University of Haifa Medical School. 

“The state of the art building—designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdi—will be a wonderfully pleasant place to learn,” Bitterman enthused. “Also, scholarships are a tangible incentive, and we are actively fundraising for the students’ entire six-year program to be underwritten.” 

Herscher said it would cost about $1.5 million to provide full scholarships for the school’s first 64 students to complete six years of study. To put this into context, he said, a similar arrangement at a mid-level U.S. medical school with intra-state students would cost approximately 100 times that amount.

“Fortunately, tuition is cheap in this country,” Herscher quipped. “And the Haifa area is relatively inexpensive as far as lodging is concerned.”

The demands of Swords of Iron have succeeded in ramming home a number of lessons for what this means, particularly for those in the north, where tens of thousands of people have yet to return to their homes.

“This is part of our commitment to not only help with reintegration of tens of thousands of residents to the north but keep them there,” Herscher said. “The evacuation has brought a heavy price to the north and there are those who are not rushing back. We have developed a quiet and tender strategy to give them what they need to remain in the area.”

While he admitted it would take a number of years, there was a pressing need to begin the process of trying to heal as quickly as possible. “Something has to start,” he stated matter-of-factly. 

To that end, Herscher said there were more than 30 initiatives being implemented to help people in the north deal with the trauma of the last year-and-a-half.

“I’ve discovered some hidden gems at the University of Haifa; it is not only a research university, we’re also bringing the ivory tower to the communities,” he said. “Wisdom that emanates from laboratories is being utilized to help those who are coming home and also those who need extra assistance to return home—where a family can be stabilized and healed.”

Herscher concluded: “If we have expertise in trauma care or nurses to detect the early signs of depression or help elderly people grapple more effectively with loneliness, the Medical School can be a flagship example of the impact we can have not only in Haifa but across the north.”

Bringing STEM to south Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv’s Afeka Academic College of Engineering, through its president Prof. Ami Moyal, is also focused on identifying areas that are lacking and seeking a structured, methodical and planned way to fill them with highly motivated and skilled engineers. Moyal has led the college since 2014 but it is in the last seven or so years that he identified a shift in the job market and began to tailor its curriculum to meet a new kind of demand.

“The model has changed from some 200 years ago—which was prevalent in K-12, as well as lifelong learning—and it moved away from being knowledge-based to competency-based,” he told JNS. “Educational processes brought knowledge, however the advent of Artificial Intelligence has shifted the emphasis to skills.”

“We implemented a major change by defining the ideal graduate profile and skills—changing the pedagogy to integrate them into the course,” he added. “We also realized students needed to be given time to work together to produce a specific outcome, emphasizing the need for collaboration.”

One of the starkest developments as a result of the shift of learning emphasis and changing the entire educational process, was that the physical layers of the campus also needed to adapt to keep pace. “We understood we must introduce a change; the new generation of students cannot sit for eight hours in a classroom,” Moyal said.

He conceded that they didn’t get everything right and there were things the college’s leadership didn’t quite understand at the time. “Either you sit and wait for someone to develop a theory or you move forward,” he said. “We developed a methodology and we started. It was trial and error, but what we’re doing represents an ongoing multi-year institutional change.”

As a result of this change, and the fact the student body has grown some 50% in the last few years, the college is moving to purpose-built premises in the south of Tel Aviv—migrating to the south-east of the city from its current north Tel Aviv home. This too was a deliberate and considered choice, and was taken in close cooperation with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai. 

“It is an area [of the city] from which fewer teenagers go to college; we hope and expect that shifting the academic institution to a lower socio-economic area will assist in developing the whole urban surroundings,” Moyal said.

He argued that it would be “good” if there was a highly-regarded engineering school in the south part of Tel Aviv.

“The young population will see students like them on a daily basis, learning engineering—and becoming active role models. It will build motivation. In addition, we want to develop the ecosystem with all local high schools in Tel Aviv, and crucially, we’ll have enough space to host high-school pupils and see how they get on in our labs. 

Moyal emphasized this was a three-tiered attempt at developing the local, national, and social needs. “Initially, we want the area to flourish. On a national level we simply need to increase the number of engineers, and socially, we want to give access to higher education to as many people as possible, especially for those who might have expected it was out of reach.”

The move to the new campus, which is expected to be completed by the opening of the 2027 academic year, will also be a vehicle for creating additional engineering programs. Moyal hopes the college will attract students from across the periphery—as well as all sectors of Israeli society.” 

Moyal is also sensitive to the ratio of men-to-women studying different disciplines of engineering.

“With regard to the STEM subjects,” Moyal explained, referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, “we’ve reached a relatively okay point where women make up some 30% of the student population. However, with regard to electrical and mechanical engineering it’s only hovering around 15%. We want to give prospective students the opportunity to see the labs, and from there build motivation and confidence; if they want it, they can do it. But they need to want it. The courses are not easy.”

David Brummer