Samara Flores EDINBURG – UTRGV welcomed approximately 36,466 students for Fall 2026, a two percent increase from the Fall 2025 semester. 7,373 of these students were incoming Freshmen.
In a survey conducted by KVAQ-TV with over 75 participants, 53.8% of students said the parking situation was very poor; 41% stated it was poor, while the remaining 5% were satisfied with it.
Yolisma Peña, a mass communication student who commutes from Brownsville, said the university should be exploring better parking solutions to accommodate the growing number of students.
“I feel like it’s necessary to get better parking solutions as the university grows and as more freshmen, more like the bigger classes of freshmen come in,” Peña said.
When asked how UTRGV could improve this situation, she stated they should turn to more inventive measures.
“I feel like everyone says this honestly, but by getting you know, little parking tower thing, a parking garage,” Peña shared.
But parking and transportation said a parking garage may not be the correct course of action, since it would raise prices of permit costs, the opposite of UTRGV’s mission for affordability. “If we were to build a parking garage it would just increase the parking permit rates all across the board, so we want to remain consistent with the universities idea [of affordability],” said Aguilar. Multiple students have taken to various social media platforms to express their discontent about the parking situations using forums on Reddit and groups on Facebook.
One student stated on Facebook… “An air-conditioned car ride to class would be nice after paying 6k per semester” in reference to the rising and often triple digit temperatures.
Another student on Facebook added, “ain’t no walking in this heat.”
