The COVID-19 pandemic that swept through the world in 2020 and forced the various higher education institutions in Israel and around the world to promptly embrace the online teaching method, placed on the agenda the question of this method’s efficacy as well as deliberations regarding its future implications. The current study reviews the development of online teaching in Israel’s higher education and examines whether this development derives from an organized and well-formulated public policy with a view to the future or is the result of the constraints and various actors within the free market. In addition, the study presents a case study of an academic institution, examining the opinions of students with regard to the benefits and shortcomings of online teaching. The research findings indicate that the development of online teaching in Israel is the result of needs, constraints, and opportunities that emerged in the free market rather than a result of organized public policy by the Ministry of Education and the Council for Higher Education. Consequently, the study presents the various implications of these unregulated developments for the quality of teaching and for student satisfaction. The study illuminates a thorough discussion that should be conducted by movers of higher education and academic institutions concerning a new effective designation of the campuses following the COVID-19 crisis as well as the distinction between virtual and real-life dimensions of academic teaching.

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Abstract. In recent years Israel's system of higher education has undergone a revolutionary transformation, leading to a sharp rise in the number of students, establishment of new degree-granting institutions, and shifts in legislation and policy. All these have changed dramatically, arousing profound public debates centering on one major issue: how to reconcile academic freedom, as manifested in a free academic "market", with the regulation of higher education. Th is study explores three main processes that occurred within Israel's higher education system since the reform in the early 1990s and attempts to identify their causes. Th e research fi ndings show that it was the government's decision to carry out a reform, rather than free market forces that led to the considerable rise in the number of applicants for academic studies. However, free market sources were found to affect admission terms to the various departments, guided by trends of demand and supply.