The impact of Israeli participatory program on success of its students

Israel has worked to improve the accessibility of its higher education to under-served communities, but lower socioeconomic students, as well as those of certain ethnic backgrounds, remain disadvantaged. Unfortunately, some 'second chance' programs developed to help facilitate admission to higher education have only increased this inequality. The following research evaluates the Sami Shamoon College of Engineering pre-academic program as a gateway for these marginalized populations to access higher education. An index is developed to visualize the clusters of socioeconomic status among geographic area and region as well as participation in the pre-academic program. The descriptive and statistical analysis looks at the ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of current undergraduate students that participated in the pre-academic program as well as their yearly GPA versus their counterparts. Discussion surrounds income inequality and both higher education accessibility as well as labour market prospects for graduates from vulnerable populations.