The multiyear work plan from the Council for Higher Education of Israel, unveiled on Tuesday, aims to promote inclusion and innovation in the nation’s academic institutions.

According to the plan, the basic budget for Israel’s higher education system will receive incremental increases of several million shekels. By 2022, the budget for higher education in Israel — currently some 10 billion shekels ($2.6 billion) — will have grown by some 7 billion shekels ($1.8 billion).

A large portion of the additional monies will be devoted to improving research infrastructure and encouraging excellence in scientific research. The program will also focus on innovation and improving the quality of instruction at Israeli universities and colleges. Tens of millions of shekels will be invested in building accelerators for student innovators, which will improve the learning experience on campuses and allow students to develop ideas with help from both the academic institutions and outside entities. The plan also aims to increase both the number of faculty and students, with an emphasis on engineering and computer science, which are vital to the Israeli economy and job market.

Approximately 1 billion shekels (about $260 million) will be devoted to helping specific populations, including Arabs, haredim, Ethiopian Israelis and residents of periphery towns, integrate into academia. The plan seeks to increase the number of haredi students in academic institutions from 12,000 today to 19,000 by the 2022 academic year.

The plan further aims to promote the presence of women in academia by steering them toward academic research and hiring women for senior faculty positions. A target of “internationality” means efforts will be made to bring thousands more students from America, Europe and the Far East to Israel for their university studies, more than doubling the current number of 12,000 foreign students studying in Israel.

Education Minister and Council for Higher Education of Israel Chairman Naftali Bennett said that “we are bringing the system, which not long ago ‘lost’ a decade, into a new period of innovation and advancement. We won’t be looking at research alone, but also at the contribution of the higher education system to reducing social gaps in Israel.”

Professor Peretz Lavie, president of the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and chairman of the Association of University Heads in Israel, said that “the government’s decision to increase [the higher education] budget is a recognition of Israeli academia’s strategic contribution to the strength of the country.”