Israel’s high-tech sector is amid a “perfect storm,” with continued war, macroeconomic volatility, the acceleration of AI in most areas, and a shrinking number of young people interested in pursuing high-tech jobs in their academic careers, a report by the Committee for Increasing Human Capital in High-Tech revealed.
“Nowadays, it’s not enough to just teach the basics to prepare the future generation for the AI-dominated future. We need to create a new way of teaching skills for them to progress,” David Perlmutter, chairman of the committee, told The Jerusalem Post.
The report pointed out that Israel’s young people are not aiming for careers in the high-tech industry, with the rate of those eligible for high-tech matriculations stalled over the last three years.
According to the results, only 10.8% of students pursue this type of career, with the numbers among female and Arab students even lower at 7.8% and 7.3%, respectively.
The report also warns that without a significant expansion of the participation of women, Arabs, Haredim, and residents of the periphery in the high-tech industry, it will be difficult to ensure Israel's competitive advantage over time.
The Innovation, Science, and Technology Minister, Gila Gamliel, addressed the report results: “The findings of the report outline a clear roadmap for us to ensure Israel's technological superiority in the age of artificial intelligence.”
Education beyond traditional classrooms
“Developers today are creating software without the need to actually code,” Perlmutter explained to the Post. “They are looking at the architecture of what he needs to do; interacting with the agents to be able to do that. These are skills that are usually developed by people who have been in much more senior positions, not graduates that just finished university.”
The report also established a roadmap to avoid this “perfect storm,” with the main point being to update the “tech maturity” targets to 20% of all graduates being from STEM careers by the 2033-2034 school year.
“Today, students go to the auditorium, get the lecture, do their homework, take the examination, and that’s it. I think the practical work has to be much bigger. With AI, students can solve simple problems using almost any tool. So we need to make them think about much deeper problems,” said Perlmutter.
Alongside the educational objectives, the report notes the need to establish a “lifelong learning system” that would enable people in high-tech jobs to continue learning in their specialties after completing their degrees and entering the job market.
The report’s roadmap also established interim targets of 15.5% by 2028 and 18% by 2031, while recommending anchoring a multi-year budget for STEM programs in the education system and expanding extracurricular training tracks.
It also pushed for the creation of micro-degree tracks in academia as part of the lifelong learning infrastructure, and updating the Central Bureau of Statistics job book in 2026-2027 to reflect new professions such as AI architect and AI implementer.
In addition, the report calls for anchoring a multi-year budget and strengthening government control mechanisms to ensure that government decisions are translated into actual implementation.
“We are committed to leading a profound change in the education and training systems, so that they will give every young man and woman in Israel the tools to integrate into the forefront of global innovation,” Gamliel said.