University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students will see a tuition and fee increase for the 2025-26 academic year.
Tuition and mandatory fees at UTC will increase 3% after approval from the UT System’s board of trustees.
UTC’s in-state tuition and mandatory fees will increase by $314 for the upcoming academic year. It brings the cost of attendance from $10,448 to $10,762, according to UT System documents.
UTC tuition increases for 2025-26 school year
The additional funding will be used for employee compensation, student recruitment and retention efforts, and a new parking garage on campus, which is expected to open by fall 2028.
With the new revenue, the university will also fund increases in scholarships, graduate assistants and new faculty positions, as well as help fund expanding academic programs across campus, including the nursing programs, said JAy Blackman, UTC’s vice chancellor of communications and marketing.
(READ MORE: UT board approves first woman chancellor in UTC history)
This is the third year in a row that UTC has raised its tuition by 3%. Over the past five years, the average tuition and fee increase at UTC is 1.8%, according to system documents.
Separate from the tuition and mandatory fee increase, the cost of on-campus housing, meal plans and parking decals at UTC will also rise by around 4%, according to system documents. Those changes will cover staff compensation and rising costs.
Undergraduate students at other campuses in the UT System will also see cost increases this fall. Tuition and mandatory fees are increasing 0.5% at the Knoxville campus, 2.5% at UT Martin and 3.1% at UT Southern.
After those adjustments, UTC continues to have the lowest tuition for in-state undergraduate students out of the campuses in the UT System.
As the UT board of trustees met Tuesday in Chattanooga, some board members spoke about working to keep prices down with Tennessee families also facing increasing costs in other areas.
“We’re trying to hold these as close as we can, but our costs are rising, too,” Trustee Bill Rhodes said. “While the state is providing us some funding, they’re not providing us all the funding, and we’re paying people more. … I think it would be unrealistic to think that our costs would not increase and, therefore, our prices would not increase over time. What our job is, is to try to suppress them as much as possible.”
Contact Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.