News Story

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 17, 2022) — Continuing a five-year trend of holding down costs for students, while significantly increasing investments in financial aid and initiatives that will advance the state, the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees approved a $5.6 billion budget for 2022-2023. 

The UK budget has more than doubled in the last decade and is some $500 million more than last year. It includes increases in tuition and mandatory fees of 2% resulting in the average increase in those numbers over the last four years to be 1.6% – far below inflation and several percentage points below average annual increases a decade ago.

“We believe we are positioned, like never before, to do more for our state,” said UK President Eli Capilouto. “We have big goals and far-reaching aspirations for Kentucky – not only because it is what we want, but because it is what our state requires.”

That trajectory of growth, Capilouto said, reflects three primary factors:

• Continued growth in the UK HealthCare enterprise where hospital revenues have grown by 200% in the last decade.
• Significant enrollment growth in the coming year. Capilouto said UK is expected to welcome the largest first-year class in history in August, approximately 6,000 students.
• A state budget in which policymakers made the largest-ever commitment to UK with investments of more than $483 million in operating dollars and capital and trust funds for infrastructure over the next two years. The state is putting forward $80 million more for performance funding, allocated through 11 performance metrics. Because UK is the only institution in the state to exceed the average growth rate in all 11 metrics, the university will receive an additional $24.8 million in performance funding this year.

Capilouto said the budget advances Kentucky in three primary ways: investments in students, investments in people and continued investments where UK’s students and people live, learn and do their work.

• Kentucky undergraduate students will pay $6,429.50 in tuition and mandatory fees for the fall 2022 semester, up from $6,305 in fall 2021. Those costs will be offset, in large measure, by a record $160 million in financial aid that doesn’t have to be repaid.
• The ninth pay increase for UK employees in the last 10 years. At more than $17 million, UK is doubling the average of the last 10 years in investments in pay increases.
• Holding down health care costs and creating expanded benefits as well as providing additional increased stipends for graduate students to be matched by colleges.
• Over the next three years, UK is likely to invest another $1 billion in infrastructure. During this period, the UK campus – from classrooms to research spaces, from health care facilities to athletics venues – has been transformed and more strategically positioned to expand its missions of education, research, service and care.

The University of Kentucky is increasingly the first choice for students, faculty and staff to pursue their passions and their professional goals. In the last two years, Forbes has named UK among the best employers for diversity, and INSIGHT into Diversity recognized us as a Diversity Champion four years running. UK is ranked among the top 30 campuses in the nation for LGBTQ* inclusion and safety. UK has been judged a “Great College to Work for" three years in a row, and UK is among only 22 universities in the country on Forbes' list of "America's Best Employers."  We are ranked among the top 10 percent of public institutions for research expenditures — a tangible symbol of our breadth and depth as a university focused on discovery that changes lives and communities. And our patients know and appreciate the fact that UK HealthCare has been named the state’s top hospital for five straight years. Accolades and honors are great. But they are more important for what they represent: the idea that creating a community of belonging and commitment to excellence is how we honor our mission to be not simply the University of Kentucky, but the University for Kentucky.