Big news, big changes.

The Director of the Ministry of Education, Shmuel Abuav, has announced a change in policy. The new policy will recognize the Sald exams as official matriculation exams for the purposes of acceptance into academic institutions.

The Sald exams are taken by students in the Beis Yaakov school system instead of regular bagrut matriculation exams. Until now these had no official recognition. Graduates from Beis Yaakov schools with no bagrut who wanted to continue their education had to go on to take external bagrut exams or spend a year in prep programs before going to study for a degree despite having Sald exams under their belts.
sources: JDN, Kikar

This is big news. This will make it far easier for Beis Yaakov graduates to get into academic programs. Because of this I would expect a natural increase in such women joining academic programs.

I wonder though if there will be a reaction against it. The purpose of the Sald exams was to keep the graduates out of academic programs, as it left entry very difficult to achieve. The Sald exams were to ensure that at least the vast majority of these young women would continue their studies in the internal seminaries and go on to mostly be teachers. The community leaders might now react by looking for another way to keep the graduates within the system - perhaps they will petition the MoE to revoke its acceptance of the Sald, or they will cancel the Sald or minimize it to not be accepted. Or maybe they'll find other ways to compete and try to keep the graduates within the system.