United Kingdom universities have turned their attention to Israel as a potential recruiting ground for overseas students.

While Israeli universities' academic standards are equal to those in Europe or the United States, the number of undergraduate places has not kept up with the huge demand from an exploding population.

Many Israelis now look to the UK for first degrees. In 1995, just under 400 Israelis enrolled on first degree courses.

The British Council reports a steady rise in interest from UK universities. This year 60 universities are expected to have stands at the council's annual recruiting fair in November compared to 42 universities in 1994 and 46 last year.

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The British Council is the main channel for Israelis wanting to study abroad, and offers them advice and information about British university and college courses and how to apply.

A funding squeeze in the UK underlies this enthusiasm. But it has coincided with demographic changes in Israel. Of the 700,000 immigrants who flooded into the country between 1989 and 1995 - one seventh of the population -many wanted university places.

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Shlomo Herskovic, of the Council for ÖйúAƬ's budget and planning committee, said that in 1992/93, 5,000 of the 61,000 Russian immigrants aged between 20 to 29 were studying at Israeli universities. That year there were about 90,000 university students.

The sudden increase in demand for places at the seven universities was not matched by increased budgets. State financing for the universities - about three billion shekels (Pounds 620 million) - covers about half of the universities' budgets, the rest comes from tuition fees, research grants and donors.

Annual tuition fees for state universities are about Pounds 1,500 and private college fees are higher.

Jack Schuldenfrei, deputy director of the British Council in Israel, said there are enough young Israelis hungry for education and whose parents can afford UK fees.

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Israelis studying in the UK have won a reputation for being intelligent, hard-working and ambitious. But while the British Council aims to promote British ÖйúAƬ, it does not control the market.

The demand to study abroad has grown so much over the past ten years that at least three commercial recruiting agencies have been set up. These agencies go beyond the council's impartial approach and act as go-betweens for the foreign students and UK universities.

Varda Entebi, a commercial recruiting agent whose brief covers Manchester, Warwick and East Anglia among others, says she takes no fee from her students (the institutions pay) and advises them about the relative value of different institutions, pointing out whether or not they have to do additional tests in English proficiency. But, neither the council nor agents can register the students at universities. Undergraduates have to apply through the Universities and Colleges Admission Service.

Campus Studies, another commercial recruiting agency, started promoting UK universities and colleges in 1986: today it includes Cardiff, Sussex and Liverpool. According to council representatives, courses in business administration, art and design, media and communications, psychology and engineering were the most popular in the last recruiting fair.

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The UK is not the only country to benefit from this demand: Italy has been a traditional choice for aspiring doctors unable to squeeze through the exacting demands of Israeli medical schools, and many Israelis go to the US for postgraduate work in sciences and engineering.

Some of the demand for law and business administration courses in the UK seems to have melted away during the past year, because of the opening of alternative private colleges in Israel in 1995. The number of law students starting university every year has risen from 400 to 2,000 in a few years. Amnon Pazy, chairman of the CHE, predicts that this will soon pass and the state will not change its system to cope.

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