The University of Kansas is proposing tuition increases of 3% for undergraduate students and 5% for graduate students as the chancellor said the university is grappling with changes coming from the federal level.
The state’s universities submitted their fiscal year 2026 tuition proposals to the Kansas Board of Regents ahead of the board’s Wednesday meeting. KBOR will consider the universities’ proposals and vote on them during their next meeting, set for June 11.
Under KU’s proposal, tuition for a 15-credit-hour semester would cost a resident undergrad student $5,649, up from $5,484 this year, and nonresident undergrads $15,089, up from $14,649.
With fees included, those totals would be $6,317 and $15,757, respectively.
KU Chancellor Douglas Girod told KBOR members the university has been doing its best with “very cloudy crystal balls,” and the current proposal was the result of that.
Girod said federal funding for research is up in the air.
“These swings are not little swings — these swings are in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollar swings,” he said. “… This evolves almost by the day, at this point.”
Some federal proposals have pushed for major cuts to funding for indirect costs of research, which is a big concern for researchers at KU and other universities. Girod said that reimbursement supports costs the university has already subsidized for the use of buildings, labs, compliance, staff and more.
“But we actually have an initiative going on nationally to have a conversation behind the scenes on that. It’s frozen until we get to the next budgets,” Girod said. “We have some time to work on that to something that’s more rational.”
He also said international student enrollment is expected to drop by about 50% nationally, “so we’ll see how that actually plays out.”
Here’s KU’s full tuition proposal:
20250514-KU-tuition-proposalKU last year increased tuition by 3.5%, across the board for resident and nonresident, undergraduate and graduate students. The numbers represented a 10% total increase since 2020, according to last year’s presentation to the board.
All state universities besides Emporia are proposing tuition increases for undergrads, and all are proposing fee increases. All but KU and KU Med are proposing fee increases for grad students.
20250514-Universities-proposed-tuition-and-fee-increasesAll universities’ complete proposals can be found at this link.
KBOR meeting agendas are available online at this link. Their meetings are livestreamed on YouTube at youtube.com/@kborkansas1908.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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