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The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors voted Tuesday to raise total student fees by $186 per student annually — from the current sum of $2,684 to $2,870 in the 2025-26 school year.

As part of the change, student athletic fees will go up $295 per student annually — from the current sum of $437 to $732 in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The nonathletic portion of the total student fee will be going down by $109 per student annually, which is why the total fee is increasing by $186 instead of by $295 or more.

Despite the increases, Virginia Tech will still have the lowest total student fee and the lowest student athletic fee among the commonwealth’s public colleges, according to Virginia Tech.

The cost of doing business in major-college athletics is going up, so the extra revenue will come in handy for the Tech athletic department.

The planned House v. NCAA settlement will allow schools to pay their athletes directly in a revenue-sharing model beginning with the 2025-26 school year.

Virginia Tech plans to distribute $20.5 million to athletes in the 2025-26 school year. That is the maximum sum colleges can pay in that school year under the planned settlement.

Tech athletic director Whit Babcock said in December that Tech had “pieced together” the $20.5 million that will be paid to athletes in the 2025-26 school year.

“We’ve used some one-time funds, we’ve gotten some assistance from campus, we’re ready to go,” Babcock said in December. “The challenge will be, and what we’re working on all the time as well, is how do we make it sustainable? Twenty million dollars, we don’t just have that laying around.”

During a board of visitors information session Monday, board member Jeanne Stosser asked what the plan is for continuing to find the funds that will keep Tech teams competitive.

Chief Operating Officer Amy Sebring replied that Virginia Tech was out of step on athletic fees to its state peers.

“(The student athletic fee increase) is a big piece of getting us to that $20-plus million that you referenced,” Sebring said at Monday’s session. “The rest of it (is) through a variety of budget actions.”

The state poses restrictions to universities’ ability to utilize student fees for athletics, said Sebring.

“We were trying to balance those constraints, but also the affordability constraint for our students,” Sebring said at Monday’s session. “We think that this (fee increase) — coupled with the budget actions that we’ll bring to you in June — will position us to do what we need to do going forward for athletics.”

Tech needs a recurring source of money for the $20.5 million but cannot use its education and general fund, Chief Financial Officer Simon Allen said at Monday’s session.

“We’ve put together a very carefully judged and finely layered approach to solve that,” Allen said. “I wouldn’t say that we have all of the answers tied down, but we do feel confident … to close that gap in a repeatable, recurring way.”

It was announced at Tuesday’s board of visitors meeting that the Virginia Tech athletic department reaped $140 million in revenue in the 2023-24 fiscal year and had $133 million in expenses.

A spokesman said Babcock was not available for comment Tuesday.

Staff writer Luke Weir contributed to this report.