Texas Christian University’s tuition rate will increase by 3% starting in the 2025-26 academic year. The university’s estimated cost for undergraduate tuition in the 2024-25 year is $61,650. A 3% increase means $1,849.50 more for the academic year or nearly $63,500. Those estimates don’t include the cost of housing, books and fees.
The university’s board of trustees approved the move during its fall meetings to “support sustainability and initiatives to enhance TCU’s academic and student experience,” TCU President Daniel Pullin wrote in a Nov. 11 email sent to TCU students and families. Need-based aid will increase by 3% to match student and family needs, he added.
A 3% increase at a private university is “pretty typical,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
“If you stop and take a step back, thinking about what’s overall inflation sitting at? It’s around 3%. What types of pay raises are employees expecting? Again, around 3%,” said Kelchen. “It’s just general operating costs.”
A statement from a TCU spokesperson said reasons for the higher tuition cost included “rising operational costs” and a commitment to “maintain and advance TCU’s standard of excellence.” The 3% tuition hike, the spokesperson noted, is the lowest increase in two decades for TCU, except for years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tuition at the Neeley School of Business and at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine will also increase by 3% in the 2025-26 academic year.
Here’s how tuition shakes out at the private university. While 3% is typical, the tuition increase the year before was not typical. It jumped by nearly 8%, from $57,130 in academic year 2023-24 to $61,650 in 2024-25. And if you go back in time nine years ago, when Adele’s “Hello” was topping the charts in November 2015, the sticker price was $40,630.
Fast forward to 2025, when the cost will reach $63,500. That amounts to a $23,000 increase over 10 years, or an 18% jump.
In an inflation-is-everywhere world, the $40,630 you were paying in 2015 comes out to about $53,800 in today’s dollars, according to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator. Even accounting for inflation, tuition this year clocks in at nearly $8,000 more than 2015, at $61,650.
Over the years, TCU tuition has caught up to Southern Methodist University, one of TCU’s peer institutions. The most recent public data comparing the two institutions in the 2023-24 academic year shows TCU’s tuition at $57,130, while SMU’s cost is $57,212. For that 80 or so bucks that a TCU student saves, they can get the SMU student a full-zip Horned Frog hoodie.
Students likely are not seeing the full sticker price of tuition when they enroll for classes each semester. A lot of money is doled out at TCU and other private institutions that decrease the cost of tuition. In the 2021-22 academic year, only 1 in 5 TCU students paid the full cost of tuition, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The other 80% got some form of grant funding, and for those students the average tuition was $44,190. The total cost for tuition that academic year was $51,570.
“Colleges budget expecting students to get pretty substantial discounts, but if they can get a share of students paying full price, that’s lovely, and that makes the rest of the budget easier,” said Kelchen, who noted that TCU has a fairly strong position in the market. “It makes it easier for them to both increase that listed price of tuition and get students who have the ability to pay for quite a bit of that increase.”
TCU officials note that over the last decade need-based financial aid has skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling from $43 million in 2012 to $165 million in 2024. For this year’s incoming freshmen, TCU awarded $82.6 million in institutional financial aid.
As students and families consider what the new price will mean for their budgets, TCU has created a frequently asked questions page with more information on the increase.