From Knowledge Enrichment to Career Development: The Case of Higher Education in Israel

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, higher education enrolment rates have risen by 7% per year in upper middle-income countries and 5% in lower middle-income countries, showing an ever-increasing appetite for higher education around the world. Most students that enter academia hope to improve their lives with better paid careers and relatively few of them dream of becoming professors and researchers themselves. Concurrently, the academic hegemony over knowledge is receding and sources of knowledge are increasingly moving towards digital platforms that are not owned by academia.
In this paper we address the development of higher education in the 21st century and the place of students in this process and analyse it in terms of preparation towards a world which will offer jobs that do not yet exist, exemplifying this process by describing the developments of higher education in Israel and by using the case study of the College of Management. We conclude that institutions of higher education need to change according to four dimensions: (1) The role of the student, (2) the learning process, (3) diversity and (4) skill and capabilities creation and we offer insights into how to manage this process of change.