The upgrade of Tel Hai College into Kiryat Shmona University has become a funding dispute that may push students, including discharged combat reservists, out of northern Israel. A representative of the Ministry of Defense’s fund for discharged soldiers wrote to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, warning that the so-called periphery scholarship, which pays for the first academic year, has been stopped.
According to the letter, the decision contradicts the understandings reached during the transition from college to university and agreements approved by the Knesset Education Committee. The scholarship was originally created to strengthen settlement in the north and attract young people to an area struggling with employment and security problems, especially as many young Israelis prefer the center of the country.
Students who chose the new university for ideological and financial reasons now say they may leave if the support is not restored. “We will simply choose to study in other places where our financial situation is taken into account and where they do receive scholarships,” they said. The student union chair at Tel Hai called the move “putting a finger in the eye” of students who came to populate the north during one of its most difficult periods.
He said the region is facing population flight, security concerns and employment difficulties, while the young people who arrived to help strengthen Kiryat Shmona are now considering leaving. The letter to Smotrich also said ministry officials had raised budgetary concerns about finding a source to continue the aid, and warned that if no funding is found, northern academic institutions that help revive the region will simply empty out. The Finance Ministry said there are no budget barriers, that it and the Tanufa administration fully funded the issue, and that regulations are now being updated to allow financing as required by law.
