STEM Skills

The Revolution That Will Realize the Potential of Israel’s Human Capital: Competency-Based Education

The world is changing, Israel is changing, and the job market is experiencing one shock after another – but education from kindergarten to academic degree isn’t keeping up. This raises doubts regarding the relevance of our schools and academic institutions, with far-reaching implications on personal and national levels. The good news is that there is something to do about it – but getting there calls for strategic planning, clearly defined goals, determination, and the enlistment of all systems along the educational continuum. Developing STEM skills is crucial for this transformation.

In the past four years, Israeli society and economy have been through several radical shocks – a global pandemic, economic slowdown, impressive development in high tech followed by a crisis, deepening social rifts, and a still-ongoing war. This relentless series of events, along with the dramatic advent of artificial intelligence, leaves no room for doubt: change has become a permanent state.

“Our functioning as citizens in a modern society is going to change completely,” says Prof. Ami Moyal, president of Afeka – the Academic College of Engineering in Tel Aviv. “Our living environments will include much more technology, particularly AI and robotics. All the systems around us will function differently, and our interface with them will change. This calls for technological literacy and a new set of skills. As for the job market – it too is changing and will probably keep on changing, which is why succeeding in it, for both workers and organizations, will require different competencies and not just knowledge.”

This insight has led Prof. Moyal to initiate a change in how engineers are educated, a change which Afeka has been implementing in recent years. “The rapid and constant rate of change makes the need for instilling personal proficiencies a must,” he explains. “Competencies such as critical thinking, self-learning, working in a multidisciplinary team, effective written and spoken presentation, and creativity are no less important – and sometimes more so – than the need for knowledge, which in the modern world has become widely available. Skill acquisition becomes vital for every citizen, not just in order to succeed in the changing job market but to survive in it, function in modern society, and improve lifelong learning processes. Furthermore, in a country whose only resource is human capital, lack of skills impacts national resilience.”

Why, then, don’t the systems responsible for training us for the job market – the education system and academia – make the necessary change? “They aren’t stagnating,” Prof. Moyal is quick to point out. “We are seeing changes in the right direction, such as more practical work at academia, collaborating with organizations in society, presentations by students in earlier years, or working on group projects instead of exams. But the changes are too slow and often too localized, certainly compared to the scope and pace of the changes taking place in the job market. If there is change, it’s primarily tactical and local, without any real chance of keeping up, and the gaps are only growing. There’s need for strategic change at the national level.”

Declining Trust in the Education Process 

The results of the gaps cited by Prof. Moyal are already apparent in surveys and in the field. According to in-depth studies in the US, the general public is increasingly losing faith in the relevance of education systems and academia when it comes to training the younger generation for the job market and teaching necessary life skills. Thus, within five years, the number of parents opting for homeschooling has risen by 50% in some states. Many young people are also preferring brief bootcamp training to academic degrees – a trend that speaks for itself.

According to surveys by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, between 2015 and 2023 confidence in the relevance of higher education declined “to a very great degree” (11% decline) or “to a great degree” (10% decline), along with a rise in those who think it has only “some” or “very little” relevance. Confidence is higher among employers, but even they mention that academic degree-holders lack personal competencies as well as additional experience, whether professional or social. According to Gallup poles, the level of confidence in the relevance of the education system in the US is also plummeting – from 38% who believed in 2009 that it is greatly or very greatly relevant, to only 26% in 2023. 

Israel exhibits a similar trend, along with a rising preference for independent and private education over national public education. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the recent speech by Israel’s state comptroller Matanyahu Englman at the Eli Horvitz Conference on Economy and Society. The comptroller warned of things to come, citing a report he’d published on future job market readiness. According to the report, while international tests are changing and emphasizing skill assessment over knowledge, Israeli matriculation exams hardly address necessary 21st century skills at all.

The Solution: Competency-Based Education

Despite the inherent problems and changes, the troubling reality described above can be fixed. In order to effect genuine change from the ground up, Prof. Moyal proposes to approach the process from a new perspective, unconstrained by preexisting limitations and assumptions. First we must define the state of Israel’s unique needs, then define goals, and then examine the constraints and formulate a national, multi-year strategy.

The first step in this crucial shift is to define the image of the alumnus for each step along the educational continuum: What do we expect undergraduate, high school, middle school, elementary school, and even kindergarten alumni to know? What skills must we equip them with? The emerging image of the alumnus must be built gradually over the educational continuum, while using the same language and same skill definitions. This characterization is perhaps the highlight of the entire project. Nowadays, knowledge is easily available and accessible. Rather than investing resources in memorizing or rephrasing it, the human brain is required to perform other complex tasks – and this requires proper preparation.

In describing this preparation, Prof. Moyal uses the term competency-based education, which is at the core of the discussion on this issue in the US. It is also the essence of the change in engineer education currently led by Afeka, the Academic College of Engineering in Tel Aviv, which primarily deals with STEM professions (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In this regard, the use of “education” to describe the training of engineers is no accident – it reflects Afeka’s view that academia must strive to systematically provide engineers with broad skills, including knowledge, proficiencies, and values, by defining all competencies as learning outcomes and instilling them in students.

Those working on the issue agree on the importance of teaching competencies as part of any educational process. This has featured prominently in the reports and recommendations of leading organizations, such as the World Economic Forum’s report of January 2021, which defines the overall skills required, including knowledge, competencies, and attitudes/approaches. However, the way to implement this on a national level is yet to be understood. This question, directly touching on the role of the education system and academia, the quality of education within them and their relevance – and in fact on any training organization, and more so on lifelong learning – has been occupying Afeka’s professional staff.

Prof. Moyal calls for a national STEM education council that will be multi-sectorial, comprised of professional bodies, and outline a total strategy using long-term planning. The need for this type of council is featured in the Afeka Framework – an operational plan initiated by the college for training Israel’s human capital in science and technology; and is now also featured as a recommendation by the National Council for Civilian Research and Development committee on science and technology education. This plan, whose key principles are already being implemented at Afeka, has the goal of working towards competency-based engineer education.

Prof. Moyal cites two recent national initiatives in the right direction: The recommendations of the Committee for Increasing Human Capital in High-Tech headed by Dadi Perlmutter, and the National Plan to Strengthen Mathematics (5 Pi 2). Both are marked by a clear goal and broad multisector collaboration. However, both featured goals that are particular, quantitative, and measurable, and were meant to solve a specific problem. According to Prof. Moyal, “We need to strengthen and deepen this direction in order to change the entire educational process.”

STEM Skills: The Key to National Resilience

The required change, Prof. Moyal stresses, is all the more urgent in light of the ongoing war. Without the requisite investment in science and technology, as well as the crucial preparation for the future job market, the question of “Who will develop the next generation of Iron Dome?” – which Prof. Moyal has recently posed at the start of every lecture – is hardly rhetorical. “The war has reminded Israel, a geographically narrow country with a dearth of natural resources, of the importance of human capital. We must preserve and improve this technological and scientific superiority, and it all starts with education – from kindergarten to academia – and continues with scientific research in academia and product development in the industry.” Focusing on STEM skills throughout the educational continuum is essential for achieving this goal.

As mentioned, Afeka has set the issue as its first priority. It approaches it both as an academic institution that is responsible for training Israel’s future engineers and understands that this requires a deep and fundamental change in education; and from a strategic and holistic overview of all the links throughout the educational continuum. Says Prof. Moyal: “The question of whether it’s necessary is far behind us. The question now is how to do it.”