The Bottom Line / Education is golden

New research from the Bank of Israel released last week claims that families without money have a hard time achieving higher education.

The main finding of the report, entitled "The effect of the liquidity constraint on access to higher education," is the low percentage of college degrees from families with incomes below the median: 41%. This compares with the 63% who graduate from college and whose families are in the upper quarter of the income scale.

Other findings, which surprise only the most naive among us, are that the poor take longer to complete their studies, and Muslims find it harder than Jews to pay for education. The report's authors propose subsidizing studies for the poor or offering them scholarships.

But the idea that tuition is the barrier to higher education is outrageous. Earlier studies have shown that tuition levels are not a significant factor preventing the needy from going to university. Annual tuition for a bachelor's degree program in Israel is less than NIS 9,000. Some observers consider this relatively high compared with other countries, but others say it is low enough not to create a financial barrier to attending college for those capable of being accepted.

Is it possible to imagine that any high school graduates or demobilized soldiers with good enough grades to be accepted would be forced to give up on a degree because their families earn too little? One clear piece of proof that this is not true is in the report itself: It says that without any financial barriers the rate of college degrees among the lower half of families in income would rise only from 41% to 48%, far from the numbers for the top quartile.

True, to go to college you need a lot more money than just for tuition: You need to work part time or in very poorly paid jobs and sacrifice potential income. Sometimes you need to move far away from home and start paying rent. There are other costs too. But are these financial pressures really keeping many students from their aspirations to expand their knowledge and academic qualifications?

If Israelis want to travel around the world for a year after the army, they simply work for a year or two and save the money they need. A year's trip in South America costs no less than a college degree.

So what is the main factor that makes it hard for low-income families to put someone through college? One possibility is directly related to the income level of the potential student's family: where they live. Israel has unconscionable gaps between education in the center of the country and the periphery, between north and south, and between rich and poor towns.

It is possible that a needy family from Ramat Gan has a better chance of sending its children to college than an average-income family from a development town in the Negev, because the elementary and secondary schools in the center of the country are better and prepare their pupils for higher education. This is a structural problem that needs to be solved at the source. Unfortunately, it seems the gaps in Israeli education are only growing.

After we account for all the measurable factors, there remains a cause much harder to quantify: the desire for education and knowledge. Even families of very modest means can go very far in acquiring an education, if it is a value the parents and children believe in.

Tens of thousands of new immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, without a cent to their names and often without a high school diploma, succeeded within a single generation in bridging the gaps in education and sent their children to college, because education was important to them. They saved, educated, preached and forced their children to do their homework, pushing them to excel.

"The important thing is for you to get a college degree," is the mentality people made fun of, but behind the saying is an ancient and praiseworthy Jewish tradition.

So is it possible to conclude from the gaps in education that needy families have no aspirations for higher education? And if so, who is to blame?

In our society today, the desire to be rich and famous is growing. A scientific or academic career is not seen as a quick way to either. We only have to remember and keep repeating that a broad education opens doors and widens our possibilities, and we have to place it at the top of our national priorities.