Israel's new academic year: the system grows, but not every program does

Israel's 2026/27 academic year opens with about 350,900 students, 2.1% more than last year, according to the Council for Higher Education (CHE). At first glance it is another year of moderate growth. But no one running recruitment for a specific program lives in the average. Beneath the total, the movement between types of institutions and between fields is much sharper.

The first gap is between types of institutions. At the bachelor's level, in the year just ended (2025/26), private colleges grew by 10% and the Open University by 7%. Universities grew by only 1%, and public colleges declined by 2.4%. The CHE has not yet published an official analysis of the reasons.

The second gap is between fields. The social sciences are once again the largest field of bachelor's study, with 37,711 students, narrowly ahead of engineering. Education grew by 7.5%, law by 8.5% and the humanities by 10.9%. In the same year, the number of students in computer science, mathematics and statistics combined fell from 22,200 to 20,500, after a decline the year before as well.

There is also a longer view. According to OECD data, Israel is one of three member countries, alongside Hungary and Finland, where the share of 25 to 34 year olds with higher education did not rise between 2015 and 2025. When that share isn't rising, a program's growth depends more on candidates choosing it, and less on a market that expands on its own.

"The CHE published the figures briefly, without in-depth analysis or detail."— TheMarker, Lior Datel, Oct 11, 2026 (translated)

What it means for an institution: the national figure is context, not a forecast for your program. CHE data describe the academic year that just ended, and arrive once a year. What is happening in the current season is measured program by program: how many people search for the field this month versus the same month last year, what share of those searches reaches you versus competitors, and what candidates are asking AI engines right now. That is the layer PULSE builds for every program.