The council is located in Albert Einstein Square, Jerusalem, next to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
[citation needed] The total budget of the council, which is funded by the government, is 6 billion NIS per year, which is then transferred to the public universities and colleges.
The council has controlled Ariel University and other West Bank institutions since February 2018 after the Knesset voted to give it that authority.
[4] The council had previously had no legal standing in the occupied West Bank; Israeli universities and colleges there had instead been supervised by the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria, which had been formed by a military decree and was abolished by the same February 2018 Knesset vote.
The most important body of the council is the committee for budget and planning, which deals with the division of funding between the various universities and colleges.