page_title: Arab citizens of Israel
section_title: Higher education
hierarchical_section_title: Arab citizens of Israel / Education / Higher education
caption_attribution_description: The Computer Science Faculty building, named after Taub, in the Technion Institute for Science, Haifa, Israel. Taken on Oct. 30th, by Beny Shlevich. Original on Flickr.
context_page_description: Arab citizens of Israel, or Arab Israelis, are Israeli citizens who are Arab. Many Arab citizens of Israel self-identify as Palestinian and commonly self-designate themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel or Israeli Palestinians. According to a 2017 survey by University of Haifa professor Sammy Smooha, 16% of the Arab population prefers the term "Israeli Arab", while the largest and fastest growing proportion prefers "Palestinian in Israel", and 17% prefer "Palestinian Arab", rejecting entirely the identity of "Israeli".
  The traditional vernacular of most Arab citizens, irrespective of religion, is Levantine Arabic, including Lebanese Arabic in northern Israel, Palestinian dialect of Arabic in central Israel and Bedouin dialects across the Negev desert; having absorbed many Hebrew loanwords and phrases, the modern dialect of Arab citizens of Israel is defined by some as the Israeli Arabic dialect. Most Arab citizens of Israel are functionally bilingual, their second language being Modern Hebrew. By religious affiliation, most are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam.
context_section_description: Nearly half of Arab students who passed their matriculation exams failed to win a place in higher education because they performed poorly in the Psychometric Entrance Test, compared to 20% of Jewish applicants. Khaled Arar, a professor at Beit Berl College, believes the psychometric test is culturally biased: "The gap in psychometric scores between Jewish and Arab students has remained steady – at more than 100 points out of a total of 800 – since 1982. That alone should have raised suspicions."
  However, a 1986 research found negligible differences in construct or predictive test validity across varying cultural groups and the findings appeared to be more consistent with the psychometric than with the cultural bias position.
caption: The percentage of Arab students at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology is around 20%.[291][292]
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