- The Utah Board of Higher Education approved modest tuition/fee increases at the state's eight degree-granting schools.
- Systemwide, tuition and fees will rise 2.23%, starting next fall.
- Tuition rates for Utah's public technical colleges will not change for the 2025-26 academic year.
Students at Utah’s eight public degree-granting colleges and universities will be handing over a bit more cash for tuition and fees next fall.
But officials at the Utah Board of Higher Education are quick to note that the tuition/fee bumps announced Friday are “near decades-low” price increases.
On Friday, the board approved a “sub-inflationary 2.23% systemwide weighted average increase” among the state’s public colleges and universities.
The increase is lower than last year’s 3.1 % tuition and fees increase — and down from the preliminary systemwide increase requests of 2.43% prior to collaboration between the Commissioner of Higher Education Office and the eight institutions, according to a Utah System of Higher Education memo.
The board considered and then amended or reduced tuition and fee proposals for Salt Lake Community College, Utah Tech University and Utah State University.
“The board commends our USHE institutions’ efforts to collaborate with the system office to develop tuition and fee increase proposals that reinforce the value proposition of higher education in Utah,” said Amanda Covington, chair of the UBHE, in a news release.
“While the board revised a handful of proposals, each institutional request reflected a real decline in the bottom line cost to Utah students.
“This year’s institutional proposals recognized serious gains in affordability prior to being submitted to the board — allowing for a more nuanced deliberation on the role of general student fees as an institutional financing mechanism.”
The board, added Covington, “deliberately addressed these issues” — recognizing the needs identified by students, “and also the precondition that associated student fees should supplement, not substitute, taxpayer and community support.”
Each year following Utah’s legislative session, the board determines the amount of additional tuition necessary to meet the operating budget needs and help fulfill the missions of Utah’s public colleges and universities, according to the USHE.
Tuition rates are adjusted to meet the legislative requirement to fund compensation increases, mandatory costs, and other expenditures such as tenure and promotion of faculty and to cover other costs for student services, programs and more.
Tuition/fee adjustment at each Utah school for the 2025-26
While the board-approved systemwide weighted tuition/fee increases average out at 2.23%, there are slight increase variations among the eight degree-granting institutions for the 2025-26 academic year.
For a resident undergraduate student taking 15 credits per semester for two semesters during the 2025-26 academic year:
- A University of Utah student will pay $224 more than the prior academic year — a 2.1% increase.
- A Utah State University student will pay $223 more — reflecting a 2.57% increase.
- A Weber State University student will pay $68 more — a 1.03% increase.
- A Southern Utah University student will pay $131 more — a 1.89% increase.
- A Utah Tech University student will pay $175 more — a 2.77% increase.
- A Utah Valley University student will pay $168 more — a 2.58% increase.
- A Salt Lake Community College student will pay $117 more — a 2.64% increase.
- A Snow College student will pay $99 more — a 2.29% increase.
“With fiscal year 26 Consumer Price Index inflation expected to read 3.1%, all institutional tuition and fee increase proposals offer real gains in affordability to Utah students” according to the USHE memo.
The tuition rates for technical education at Utah’s public technical colleges and degree-granting institutions with a technical college mission will remain at the current rate for the 2025-26 academic year.
More work awaits Utah’s higher ed board
While approving tuition and fee adjustments at the state’s public schools is an annual duty for the UBHE, more essential work awaits the body.
Later this year, the UBHE will begin reviewing strategic reinvestment plans from each degree-granting school, as now required by the Legislature.
Utah’s public colleges and universities are being directed to reallocate millions of state-sponsored budget dollars to programs determined to be of highest value.
The UBHE will play a pivotal role in the coming years in helping to establish the schools’ reallocation process criteria and approval.
Utah’s public higher education institutions are currently undertaking the difficult process of establishing reallocation plans to prepare for their upcoming presentations to the UBHE and lawmakers.