AI and data science enrollment booms as Israel’s new academic year opens

About 336,350 students are starting the new academic year this Sunday morning (today) of year 5786 (Jewish calender year) / 2025–2026 in 57 higher education institutions across Israel. This marks an increase of about 2,000 students compared to last year.

The student unions at Ben-Gurion University and the Open University have gone on strike, protesting the proposed military conscription law.

At Tel Aviv University, the student union decided to postpone their planned strike until the final draft of the conscription plan is presented in the Knesset.

Engineering continues to lead the fields of study in Israel: 37,600 students are enrolled in engineering programs – about 18% of all undergraduate students.

At the same time, there has been a decline in the number of computer science students. Meanwhile, over the past five years, the number of students in data science, artificial intelligence, and data engineering programs has quadrupled.

Due to the opening of new medical faculties at the Weizmann Institute, Reichman University, and the University of Haifa, the number of medical students is expected to rise this year to 1,450, compared to 1,268 who began medical studies last year.

Even this year, despite the end of the war, there is a special support framework for military reservists. Over the past year, about 70,000 students served in the reserves. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, dropout rates among reservists were lower than among those who did not serve.