If it's secular, it should be for women too. Why does the article not mention whether women also have this option to defer army service for a year? And whether any women are already doing so ? Article only mentions men.

Women can and do attend. I've visited before. Bummer that the article didn't have women's voices..

Study Torah not Talmud.

I sincerely hope that when secular Jews study the Talmud in their "secular yeshiva" (a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one) they don't graduate as fanatics. I would hate to see these folks start harassing women on the buses; throw bricks through windows and stand on the streets yelling "Shabbos, Shabbos" in Yiddish because Hebrew is "not for use outside of shul". I would hope these seculars will be more civilized in the aftermath of their studies (BTW after they finish their year of studies, they'd better go into the IDF and become good soldiers).

They must learn without a kipa? Must be mixed? Must be violent?

Study anything!

Torah is the heritage of the community of Yakov. All Yehudim should delve into their heritagte.

Kol ha'kavod to be learning. "We can understand what the Halacha is, but it doesn't bind us"? Twice in Torah is written: "I put before you life and death. Choose life that you may live." It's your choice, but at some point you'll hopefully, humbly accept that "everything's in heaven except the fear of heaven." Keep up the good work!

Give them a break. Any study of Torah is good.

Periodically secular Jews decide they want to take back the Torah from the religious!!! And the result is always the same. They learn for a while, it even becomes the trendy thing to do. Then some become religious, some keep learning but stay secular, and most give it up. Early reform also had secular learning of the Talmud. In fifty years the cycle will start all over.

if they study it with proper teachers it will brings G-d´s light down here "where is more than one man studing Torah , Shechina rests there" (pirke avot)

At American shopping malls selling dreck. That seems to be where the seculars end up.