When Israelis are asked which college they recommend, Ono Academic College takes the top spot. The results of this survey were published in a recent article in Globes about higher education in Israel. In the article, Dikla Bar-Ilan, Career Center Director at the College of Management, explained that those planning to study in Israeli colleges – even more than universities – want to receive added value from their studies that will help them in the job market.
In other words, according to Bar-Ilan, the relevance of the degree to its usefulness in the job market is the main criterion for choosing an educational institution today.
Ono, with a student body of more than 21,000, is Israel’s largest college and offers classes at five different campuses – Kiryat Ono, Jerusalem, Haifa, Or Yehuda, and Netanya. The college focuses on degrees that provide professional training, such as education, nursing, law, computer science, business administration with a specialization in accounting, and sports therapy. All told, Ono offers 47 different programs of study.
Students at Ono represent every segment of Israeli society, including secular, modern orthodox, Haredi, Muslim, Christian, and Druze. Half of the students at Ono today are first-generation college students. The school has more than 44,000 graduates, and 83% of the graduates are employed in their chosen field of study.
Israel is among the most educated countries in the West, according to the Globies piece, and more than 50% of people ages 25-64 hold academic degrees, compared to 41% in the OECD.