A wide variety of higher education opportunities are available in the Chattanooga area, with options for diverse degrees, certifications, and competitive scholarships. These colleges are recognized for their affordability, award-winning campuses, and variety of program offerings. 

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) was founded in 1886, making it a key institute in Chattanooga’s education sector. Listed by U.S. News & World Report for its notable online MBA program and specialty health graduate programs as well as ranked on the list of best engineering schools, the campus is also home to the renowned Gary W. Rollins College of Business. UTC features 97 undergraduate degree programs and 88 graduate degree programs. Construction of a new health science building in 2023 will help increase enrollment by as much as 60% in what is now the No. 1 nursing program in Tennessee, according to RegisteredNursing.org. 

The area’s nationally recognized public community college, Chattanooga State Community College, offers another of the state’s top nursing programs, which awards over $1 million in scholarships annually and achieves a 96% job placement rate. With a variety of degrees, 50 career programs, and three locations in Chattanooga, Kimball, and Dayton, the college serves over 11,000 students. Chattanooga State boasts the only fully embedded technical college on a community college campus in the state and partners with Tennessee Building and Construction Institute of Chattanooga, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Volkswagen, and WACKER Chemical to offer hands-on training opportunities for students. To allow for growth in the Tennessee College of Applied Technology, Chattanooga State was approved in 2022 to build a new advanced manufacturing building, expanding overall enrollment capacity by 84%. 

Several options for private, faith-based education are available in the Chattanooga area. Cleveland’s Lee University, a liberal arts college, ranked No. 23 on U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 list of top regional universities in the South and boasts the No. 2 nursing program in the state, as listed by RegisteredNursing.org. Covenant College is another Christian liberal arts school in the area, located on Lookout Mountain. Known for its small classroom size, Covenant College has a student body representing more than 40 states and 30 countries. 

Dayton’s Bryan College offers more than 50 unique fields of study and 14 post-graduate degrees. Southern Adventist University in Collegedale is College Factual’s No. 5 Seventh-day Adventist school in the nation with a 13:1 student-faculty ratio, 75 baccalaureate majors, 20 associate majors, and a variety of minors and certificate programs. Tennessee Wesleyan University, a private Methodist university in Athens, has an 87% job placement rate and over 60 academic programs to choose from. 

Tennessee prioritizes higher education with programs like former Governor Bill Haslam’s Drive to 55 alliance, which is on track to get 55% of Tennessee residents equipped with a postsecondary degree or certificate by 2025. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission supports this goal with programs like Advise TN, which provides services to high school juniors and seniors to help them enroll in the postsecondary institution where they are most likely to succeed. SCORE (State Collaborative on Reforming Education) works to close opportunity gaps and support students from kindergarten to career. In 2015, Tennessee was the first state in the country to offer high school graduates two years of community or technical college tuition-free with the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, and the Tennessee Reconnect Grant was launched in 2018 to extend the same opportunity to adult learners. Since these programs began, Tennessee has seen an increase in application, enrollment, and retention rates.