Compensation Criteria In Higher Education In Israel And Elsewhere: Evaluation Of Research And Teaching Outcomes

Teachers in academia are usually not required to have teacher training but must often be evaluated by their students who expect them to have much better teaching qualifications than their high school teachers. However, teachers in elementary and high schools are required to go through several years of teacher training, resulting in a teaching certificate, which is usually mandatory in the secondary school system.  This anomaly causes great tension in colleges and universities and often results in pressure to "improve" teaching evaluation in regard to academic level. In many countries, a doctorate degree in any field automatically allows its holder to teach in academic institutions because the students are expected to learn on their own while the professor is the expert responsible for helping with complicated questions. These discrepancies often hamper the advances of higher education.   This paper presents the situation of teaching in higher education in selected countries, while presenting various paradigms for improving the state of teaching in higher education. The aim is to study the methodologies used to assess the quality of teaching in higher education systems, in general, and in Israel, specifically

Location of Emergency Treatment Sites after Earthquake using Hybrid Simulation

A mass-casualty natural disaster such as an earthquake is a rare, surprising event that is usually characterized by chaos and a lack of information, resulting in an overload of casualties in hospitals. Thus, it is very important to refer minor and moderately-injured casualties, that are the majority of casualties and whose injuries are usually not life threatening, to ad hoc care facilities such as Emergency Treatment Sites (ETSs). These facilities support the efficient use of health resources and reduce the burden on permanent healthcare facilities. In our study, a hybrid simulation model, based on a combination of discrete events and an agent-based simulation, provides a solution to the uncertainty of positioning temporary treatment sites. The simulation methodology used compares between "rigid" and "flexible" operating concepts of ETSs (main vs. main+minor ETSs) and found the "flexible" concept to be more efficient in terms of the average walking distance and number of casualties treated in the disaster area

The Price of Success: Some Consequences of Increased Access to Higher Education in Israel

Access to higher education in general, and to a bachelor’s degree in particular, constitutes a major issue on the agendas of higher education systems in recent years. The end of WWII marked the global transition to higher education institutions of a democratic, open nature, and in most western countries, including Israel, the accelerated pace of this transformation in the twentieth century led to the massification of the bachelor’s degree. In the final quarter of the twentieth century, Israel’s Planning and Budgeting Committee conceived of the system of higher education as consisting of two levels: universities, with a focus on research and graduate studies, and colleges with a focus on undergraduate studies, which would serve as instruments of equality and social justice for students from the periphery through access to higher education. However, increased access affected both the new colleges and the longstanding universities, which competed among themselves, and gradually obliterated the differences between them. In this paper we discuss two specific aspects of this transformation and their implications: whether the Israeli Council of Higher Education’s major goal of increased access has been achieved and the effects of increased access to bachelor’s degree programs on the expansion of master’s degree programs.Key words: Higher education; Bachelor’s degree; Massification; Equality; Justice; PeripheryRésumé L’accès à l’enseignement supérieur en général, et à un diplôme de baccalauréat, en particulier, constitue un enjeu majeur dans les agendas des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur ces dernières années. La fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale a marqué la transition mondiale vers les établissements d’enseignement supérieur d’une société démocratique, la nature ouverte, et dans la plupart des pays occidentaux, y compris Israël, l’accélération du rythme de cette transformation dans le XXe siècle a conduit à la massification du diplôme de baccalauréat. Dans le dernier quart du XXe siècle, de la planification d’Israël et du Comité du budget a conçu le système d’enseignement supérieur comme étant composée de deux niveaux: les universités, avec un accent sur la recherche et aux études supérieures, et les collèges avec un accent sur les études de premier cycle, qui serviraient comme des instruments de l’égalité et la justice sociale pour les étudiants de la périphérie à travers l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur. Toutefois, l’accès accru affecté à la fois les nouveaux collèges et les universités de longue date, qui se disputent entre eux, et peu à peu effacé les différences entre eux. Dans cet article, nous discutons de deux aspects particuliers de cette transformation et de leurs implications: si le Conseil israélien de l’objectif majeur de l’enseignement supérieur de l’accès accru a été réalisé et les effets d’un accès accru aux programmes de baccalauréat sur l’expansion des programmes de maîtrise.Mots clés: L’enseignement supérieur; Baccalauréat; La massification; L’égalité; La justice; à la périphéri