Between 1997 and 2005 the percentage of Arab students in the colleges grew from 3.5% to 5.6% and in teacher training colleges from 15.6% to 30.4%. After a long period of stagnation there has been an increase in the share of Arab students studying for a master’s degree in the universities from around 3.6% throughout the 1990s to 5.1% in 2004. In 2008/09 about 6.4% of the total number of master’s degree students in universities were Arabs.