The Descent from the Ivory Tower: On Higher Education's Contribution to Reducing Social Disparities. the Case of Israel.

Access to undergraduate degrees has become a major issue on the agendas of the systems that have been concerned with higher education in recent years. The end of WWII marked the beginning of a shift to higher education institutions of a more democratic and open nature compared to the institutions of the previous centuries. This development expanded in most Western countries in the second half of the twentieth century and has led to a glut in undergraduate degrees. In less than 50 years, the statistics in this field have doubled and even tripled. This global trend has also affected Israel, one of the many countries that have joined the international higher education revolution. In Israel, the proportion of students among the young adult population has more than doubled in two decades, from 23% in the 1990s to more than 50% in 2013. Undergraduate studies have arguably become a degree for the masses. This paper discusses the price of this social policy and explores its academic implications.