Unusually High Number Of Haredim Apply For New College's Biotechnology Program

Hadassah College’s Strauss Campus, which opens next month, will offer ultra-Orthodox students an academic environment tailored to their lifestyle. This includes separation between men and women in the classes, which are mostly during the evening, as well as separation from the college’s main campus, located across the street, which is attended by secular students.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Close to half of those who applied to study at Hadassah College’s new Jerusalem campus designed for haredi students applied to study biotechnology, an unusually high demand for a scientific field from the haredi community.

Hadassah College’s Strauss Campus, which opens next month, will offer ultra-Orthodox students an academic environment tailored to their lifestyle. This includes separation between men and women in the classes, which are mostly during the evening, as well as separation from the college’s main campus, located across the street, which is attended by secular students.

The new campus will offer students full undergraduate programs in fields such as biotechnology, management studies, computer science, communications and politics..…

About 1,000 haredim applied to the different programs at the new school, half of whom are specifically interested in the biotechnology track.…

In general, the majority of the new campus’s students will be women, but as far as the biotechnology program is concerned, men showed more interest: the program’s gender ratio is about 65 percent men and 35% women.

In addition, married men enrolled in biotechnology studies are offered a sum of NIS 1,500, which they can use for their studies, housing or any other basic need.

Applicants [who] do not possess a high school diploma or a psychometric test score will be required to take a preparatory academic year in addition to the three-year program.

During the preparatory year, they will undergo training in math, English, academic writing and other subjects necessary for them to learn in order to fill the gap between them and other students.…

The programs offered at the Strauss campus are the same as those taught on the main campus of Hadassah College, which is currently attended by over 2,400 students. They will also be conducted by the same faculty members.

Comments

[ruthie]

and after this education how do they enter the workforce? sit behind a curtain? omg

[Shin]

never trust a scientist who also claims to be a creationist.

[Seraphya]

How can they hope to understand biotechnology without understanding evolution?!

[Sarek]

Yeah, wouldn't biotech conflict with the Adam & Eve Y6K etc. beliefs?

[devorah]

And any employer who hires them will have to maintain this nonsense?

[shmarya is a satmarer]

why cant anyone look on the bright side?

[Bassy the Haredi Slayer]

Not sure what the biotechnology degrees mean. In the States Bachelor's Degrees in any biology field is useless, you need a PhD or at least master's.

My guess is that the biotechnology degrees are window dressing for training toward positions such as Lab Technician or Research Assistant.

It is a great that the program tries to steer Haredim toward education which can lead to a job and not toward soft science degrees which are mostly useless in getting a job ( but are good in learning about the human condition...)

[John Nagle, Silicon Valley, CA]

Here's the program description:
http://www.hadassah.org/site/c.keJNIWOvElH/b.6585255/

"The three-year curriculum includes courses in molecular biology, DNA analysis, molecular genetics, bioinformatics, drug design, immunology, and microbiology."

A comparable US college 3-year program ("http://madisoncollege.edu/biotechnology-laboratory-technician-3-year-program-option") is titled "Biotechnology Laboratory Technician - 3 Year Program Option". That's a more realistic description. It's job training for work in a wet lab.

[Jeff]

Impossible! Haredim do not go to college.

Posted by: Jeff | November 08, 2012 at 10:39 AM

Shamrya, someone is sockpuppetting me.

[Shmarya]

Posted by: Jeff | November 08, 2012 at 05:16 PM

I dealt with it.

[Jeff]

Thank you.

[mimi]

"How can they hope to understand biotechnology without understanding evolution?!"

They can't. This is going to be great for secularism.