Israel received its 11th university on Tuesday following the Higher Education Council’s decision to upgrade Tel Hai College near Kiryat Shmona in the Upper Galilee, and award it university status thanks to a $181 million grant to meet the relevant requirements.

The unanimous decision by the Council for Higher Education in Israel—a supervisory board headed by Education Minister Yoav Kisch—means that beginning with the 5786–87 (2026-27) academic year, the University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee will have the title for a five-year trial period. If it passes a review in 2031, it will keep the title indefinitely.

In keeping with the requirements of a university in Israel, the Kiryat Shmona institution will offer several PhD programs. The school has applied to provide them in biotechnology, education, psychology and nutritional studies, Calcalist reported.

The university, which is the only one north of Haifa, will feature a new engineering faculty focused on precise agricultural studies, information engineering and artificial intelligence. It will also have a university hospital and a veterinary school. All the new campuses are to be built in various parts of Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s northernmost city.

The new status will entail a significant growth in the student population. Tel Hai College had about 4,500 students, roughly half of the number of students attending Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel’s smallest. That former college was the penultimate institute to be recognized as a university in Israel, obtaining the title in 2021.

The state funding of 570 million shekels ($181 million) for the new university is part of a broader plan to strengthen Israel’s northern border area, which suffered major damage during the 2023-24 war with Hezbollah, and which lost thousands of its residents because of it, the Calcalist report said.

The move had been delayed due to a stalemate in talks between the Upper Galilee Regional Council, where the current Tel Hai College is located, and the government regarding the transfer of some of the campuses to the neighboring Municipality of Kiryat Shmona. Ultimately, the regional council agreed to share the university with Kiryat Shmona, breaking through the impasse, according to the report.

The campus has been a major source of revenue for the regional council in a region with relatively few industrial parks and other income-generating opportunities. The dispute has also been polarizing because of the ideological and demographic differences.

The regional council encompasses 22 kibbutzim, many of which have revenue from industries and agriculture. In the largest of the council’s locales, Kibbutz Shamir, the Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kisch received 4.7% of the vote in the last election.

Kiryat Shmona is an impoverished border city with a predominantly Sephardic population. Likud received 49% of the vote in the last election.

“From the onset, I had determined that the university will be an inseparable part of the city,” Kisch said in a statement. “Accordingly, the eastern campus of Tel Hai college was transferred to Kiryat Shmona’s jurisdiction and an agreement was reached that any future facility of the university would be built exclusively in the city.”

Professor Ami Moyal, chairman of the Higher Education Council’s budget and planning committee, said: “An academic research institution in the north is expected to strengthen the region’s resilience through applied research connected to the needs of the area, and expand opportunities for social mobility for the youth of the Galilee and the north.”

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