The Transformation of Higher Education in Israel since the 1990s: The Role of Ideas and Policy Paradigms

This article examines the transformation of Israel's higher education system since the 1990s. During that period, the system underwent expansion, diversification, privatization, and internationalization in a series of pathbreaking reforms. The main argument is that while external factors—such as demographic trends—exerted pressure for change, the trajectory and policy options preferred were shaped by ideational factors. Policy entrepreneurs played a crucial role in advancing pathbreaking institutional change when they reframed policies through linking cognitive ideas of “what has to be done” with the normative ideas that granted legitimacy to the proposals for reform.