Chairman of the Jewish Home party and Education Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed the opening of the academic year for Israeli higher education, and announced that fewer students are choosing to study law - with a corresponding increase in the number of engineering students.
"With the opening of the academic year, I can announce that we succeeded in fulfilling the great task we set for ourselves two-and-a-half years ago - to train fewer lawyers and more engineers in Israel," said Bennett. "Look, we have a huge surplus in the legal profession in Israel. The highest ratio in the world. For every 150 people there is an attorney in Israel, and besides, we have a huge shortage of engineers.Yet for years the higher education system continued to issue and train far too many lawyers.
"Today I can report that for the first time the number of law students has decreased significantly, falling from 16,000 to around 13,000 over the past two-and-a-half years, with a dramatic increase in the number of engineering and high-tech students from 24,000 to 29,000."
"I call upon the young people of Israel to choose promising professions in the high-tech field, as well as in the humanities, [where some] fields of student need to be strengthened."
"It’s no coincidence that Israel is one of the most educated countries in the world. In terms of the percentage of the population that holds college degrees, Israel is the fourth most educated population in the world, and we should be proud of our students. I would like to thank Prof. Yaffa Zilbershatz, Chairman of the Student Union, whose cooperation with is excellent, and Mr. Ram Shefa.
"On behalf of the Government of Israel, I congratulate the hundreds of thousands of students who teach at Jewish and Arab universities, Druze, haredi, women and men, in the humanities and social sciences, in high-tech and in science, in medicine and in law. A fruitful and successful school year."