Budget Prioritizes Students, Employees and Health of Kentucky

Campus Community,

A budget — whether in a household, business or university — is how we understand priorities. How we spend our time and resources makes clear what we care about the most.

This afternoon, the UK Board of Trustees enacted our budget for 2025-2026, an $8.6 billion spending plan that says we care about:

• Our students, their success and how we are doing so much to prepare them for lives of meaning and purpose.
• Our people, who make real our mission to advance Kentucky.
• The health of our state and its future, as evidenced by investments in discovery and extending care.
• Prudent planning in the face of uncertainty and questions, from the federal government and about the economy.

These are the principles that drive our budget and how, in the next year, we plan to work together to advance Kentucky in all that we do. Here are the highlights:

• The budget includes a modest increase of 3% as authorized by the Council on Postsecondary Education in tuition and mandatory fees, designed to hold down prices and increase access. The tuition and mandatory fee rate for undergraduate students from Kentucky will be $6,953.50 in Fall 2025, up from $6,751 in Fall 2024.
• For six years, the rolling, four-year average for tuition and fee increases at UK has been under 3%.
• The budget includes a 1.5% increase in compensation for all eligible UK and UK HealthCare employees, with a minimum raise of $750. This will be the 12th time in 13 years UK is providing compensation increases.
• In this budget, UK is investing more than $80 million in additional compensation and benefits.
• The university also is expanding parental leave and elder care leave — from two weeks to four weeks for parental leave and from one week to two weeks for elder care leave.
• UK’s budget anticipates a record level of more than $500 million in research funding and expenditures in the year ending June 30, 2025.
• UK is projecting an approximate 10% decline — a prudent approach, given the uncertainty of funding streams and the federal research agenda right now.
• The health care enterprise, which cares for people in every region of the state and beyond Kentucky’s borders, has a more than $5.1 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2025-26.
• This budget also details potential investments by UK Athletics of up to $110 million in their facilities over the next few years, part of a new governing model and operating structure for UK Athletics designed to grow revenues to ensure long-term financial stability and growth capacity. You can read more about those investments here.

To be sure, we live and operate in a moment and time of heightened uncertainty — questions about how we are funded, scrutiny about how we are perceived in some spaces and planning for how we should respond to current challenges.

But if we remain firmly fixed on our mission — to advance this state in everything that we do — we will be successful. More importantly, our state will be better for it, with a more secure and sustainable future.

That profound sense of purpose has guided us for more than 160 years. Now, more than ever, we believe it’s that purpose — and the promise it heralds — that will continue to light our path in the days and years ahead.
Thank you for all you do to make that mission — to advance Kentucky — possible, now and into the future.

Eli Capilouto
President