The number of recipients of academic degrees has decreased by 3% - only 14% were Arabs

The number of recipients of academic degrees has decreased by 3%, from 79,600 in the 2018/19 school year to 77,200 in 2019/20. A particularly high decrease of 6.4% was recorded in the number of master's degree recipients from 25,700 to 24,000 and in particular in academic colleges (13.4%). There was a more moderate decrease in undergraduate recipients (1.5%). This is according to data on recipients of academic degrees in 2020, published today by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The decline is due, among other things, to the slowdown in the number of students in recent years. In the 2016/17 school year, in which a large proportion of degree recipients began studying in 2019/20, for example, there was a slight decrease of 0.5% in the number of students. This decrease is due both to a temporary decrease in the size of the cycles and to an increase in their share of the population of Arabs and ultra-Orthodox, who turn less to academia. Another reason could be the increase in the share of Arab and ultra-Orthodox students in the academy, which increases the number of dropouts. It is unlikely that the corona was able to influence the data.
In 2020, 77,000 people received academic degrees from institutions of higher education, of which 51% from universities, 35% from colleges and 14% from colleges of education. In the last three decades since 1990, the number of degree recipients has increased fivefold, from 15,000 in 1990 to 77,000, at a rate of 5.6% per year. This is especially due to the opening of the academic colleges and the academicization of the colleges to educate.
It is precisely against this background that the fact that the number of recipients of academic degrees decreased by 3% in 2020 stands out. The number of first degree recipients decreased by 1.5%, from 51,200 to 50,400. In universities the number of first degree recipients has gone through the place while in colleges it has dropped by 3% and in colleges of education by 2%.
An even more significant decrease of 6.4% was recorded in the number of master’s degree recipients. The number of recipients of master's degrees in colleges decreased by 13% from 2018/19 to 2019/20 and in universities and colleges of education by 3%. In contrast, there was a 10% increase in the number of recipients of a PhD from 1,640 to 1,810. Only 19% of graduates did so in a research track.
48,000, which is 62%, of the recipients of the degrees, were women, that is, three out of five. This situation exists in both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Only in the third degree the degree of degree recipients is 50.5%, which means that there is equality between men and women. However, among the graduates in engineering and architecture for women, there is a low representation of 30% in the first degree and 27% in the second degree.
Only 14% of degree recipients were Arabs and only 5% of degree recipients were ultra-Orthodox. These data are much lower than the share of these sectors in the population and they prove that the increase in the number of students from both sectors is not enough. Make sure they also manage to finish the degree.