For the past few years, faculties of the humanities in the Israeli academia have been facing a serious crisis, in light of the considerable decline in numbers of registered students. According to figures provided by the Central Bureau of Statistics, over one-third of all undergraduate students in Israel were studying humanities in 2002. By 2012, that number had plunged to just one-quarter.

More current statistics released at the beginning of the academic year (October 2013) by the Council for Higher Education are even more disturbing. Only 7.5% of undergraduates now choose to study the humanities.

This downward trend has serious implications on the future of those faculties, and even on their present. In April, students at Tel Aviv University were informed that the Department of French Studies would be closed. Meanwhile, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which boasted just three years ago that it had received an enormous 100 million shekel ($29 million) bequest for its faculty of the humanities, has now announced that it will be slashing 20% of its junior faculty members.

Professor Michele Bokobza Kahan, who heads the department of French studies at Tel Aviv University, blames the dramatic change on two factors: the Internet and private colleges. She said, “The Internet revolution is a cultural revolution in the full sense of the term. It changed patterns of thought and behavior and our access to information. Boundaries, which were clear in the past, have become blurred. This impacts the traditional way that the humanities are studied.”