Attitudes toward the University of Israeli Executive Master's Students: Will the Public Save the Public University?

Executive master's programs have flourished in Israeli research universities during the last decade as part of their privatization. The new students are supposed to save the mission of the public university. The attitudes of 254 executive students in one university toward the university are compared with those of 178 students in seven parallel regular programs. We find that the executive students support more strongly the further privatization and the business-like conduct of the university, yet they show lower support for the university's social and cultural roles. It seems that the executive students represent the current critical views of the universities by the general public. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.