For the first time since the reading of the Israeli Nobel laureates and a series of committees regarding studies and the spirit and society in Israel - an academic institution will be opened that will award a bachelor's degree to a selected group of outstanding students in a structured core program in the humanities, natural and social sciences, with specialization. Admission: not by psychometrics, but by a special test developed and applied in Cambridge together with a personal interview and writing a text
The opening of the "Complete Academic Center" was approved this fall, for which registration will open on January 20. He will award a degree in the B.A. (Israeli bachelor's degree). This is the first academic institution in Israel, which will be inspired by the "liberal arts" method, a school of thought that was established about three hundred years ago in England and the United States in prestigious colleges, and includes a "humanistic curriculum" - structured core studies, mainly in the humanities, for a small and select group of outstanding students . The admissions process to the academic institution will also be unique and will not be based on grades psychometric but on a special test developed and implemented in Cambridge, which will be joined by a personal interview, writing a text, and graduation grades.
The "Complete Academic Center" will open its doors in the coming academic year in Jerusalem, in the fall of 2013, and registration. The approval is the final step in the process of issuing a permit to open academic institutions in Israel, which lasts several years, when all decisions on the establishment of new colleges are finally approved by the government based on the decision of the Legislative Assembly. According to the law, submitting an application to establish an academic institution requires the establishment of a public council. In March 2009, the application for the establishment of the Mossad was submitted, signed by the Mossad as members of the public council, a number of Israeli businessmen, society, academics and the public, including Prof. Ruth Gavizon, hi-tech entrepreneurs Aviv Rozh and Ruthie Polchak, Commander of the Metkal patrol and Doctor of Philosophy Doron Avital, law professor Aharon Namder, and Dr. Einat Wilf.
The president of the Shalem Academic Center will be Prof. Martin Kramer, who was on the faculty of Tel Aviv University for 25 years and served there as the head of the Dayan Center, as well as a visiting professor at a number of universities abroad, including Harvard and Chicago. Kramer is also the author of the bestseller "Growers of Tooth on the Sand".
"The unique curriculum of the Shalem Academic Center is designed to impart extensive knowledge of the cultural and scientific infrastructure of the contemporary discourse, and to develop creative and critical thinking," says Dr. Ido Hebroni, the educational director of the "Shelem Academic Center." To this end, all our students will participate in the core studies They included a comprehensive reading of the Western masterpieces, an in-depth acquaintance with the Jewish tradition - from the Bible to Applefeld - studies of introductions to the sciences - physics and biology -, and courses in the social sciences and the culture of the Middle East and the Far East. Our studies will be conducted in small classes and our pedagogies are adapted to develop discussion and improve the students' written expression abilities."
The establishment of the Shalem Academic Center, dedicated to learning in this spirit, comes against the background of the extensive public discussion in recent years about the crisis in spiritual studies in Israel.
In 2005, Nobel Prize winner Prof. Aharon Chachanover said in an interview with Saber Plutsker that "without developed humanities and Jewish sciences, there will be no quality science in the State of Israel. Not physics, not chemistry, not mathematics and not medicine." Similar calls were made in articles and interviews by other winners, among them Prof. Israel Oman and Prof. Hershko.
In the years 2007-2009, Prof. Panina Klein's committee (Israel Prize laureate) worked, which formulated recommendations with a view to expanding enrichment studies "outside the discipline" as defined. Following this, the MLA even adopted a series of steps with the aim of expanding the integration of the humanities and social sciences in academic studies.
In 2010, Amos Shapira, CEO of Cellcom and formerly CEO of El Al, announced at a conference of managers, "Leave management, hire humanities graduates." At the same conference, a representative of the reputable consulting company "McKinsey" said that the company checks the skills and thinking tools of its candidates and not necessarily the fact that they are graduates of the "reputed" faculties such as business administration. A McKinsey representative even testified that only less than half of the consultants in the company, which operates in fifty countries, have a degree in business administration.
In 2011, a report was submitted to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Education regarding a national move to promote the humanities, which is being implemented as part of the activities of the Council for Higher Education and the Ministry of Education.
