Skills & Careers
Universal Technical Institute has held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for UTI-Atlanta, its first campus in Georgia, and auto-parts company NAPA said it will provide $75,000 in scholarships for students at the Smyrna school, the company announced Wednesday, Oct. 21.
The campus itself is not new this week. UTI announced the opening of UTI-Atlanta on Aug. 4, and the Oct. 21 release describes a ceremony it says took place recently, without giving the date. More than 100 regional leaders, employers and community partners attended, according to the company.
The campus
UTI-Atlanta sits at 7100 Highlands Parkway SE in Smyrna, in Cobb County. The company says it is designed to serve approximately 1,500 students “at scale,” which is a capacity figure rather than current enrollment; UTI has not disclosed how many students are enrolled now.
Training programs listed by the company are automotive, diesel, aviation, electrical, robotics and automation, HVACR (heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration) and welding. The Oct. 21 release describes the building as a 150,000-square-foot facility. Earlier company announcements in February and August put it at 117,000 square feet, and the company has not explained the difference.
The campus web page lists upcoming class start dates of Nov. 16 for automotive technology, diesel/industrial, HVACR and welding; Dec. 7 for airframe and powerplant (aviation maintenance); and Jan. 4, 2027, for the automotive, diesel, HVACR and welding programs again. The page also notes that VA education benefits are not currently available at the Atlanta campus, a detail that matters for veterans comparing schools.
Scholarships and employer partners
NAPA’s $75,000 is dedicated to students at the new campus, according to Danny Huffaker, NAPA’s senior vice president of product and marketing. The release does not say how many scholarships that will fund, the size of individual awards or how students qualify, so it should not be read as covering tuition for the campus’s students broadly. NAPA’s corporate headquarters is in Atlanta, Huffaker said.
When UTI announced the opening in August, it listed 24 companies it said were already helping build the campus’s talent pipeline, including CarMax, Cox Automotive, Hendrick Automotive Group, Lincoln Electric, Penske Automotive Group, Snap-on Tools, Sonic Automotive and Yancey Bros. Co. The company has not said what each partnership involves.
The labor-market claim
Todd Hitchcock, UTI’s executive vice president of strategy, growth and operations, said at the ceremony that “Georgia is projected to have more than 10,000 annual job openings across the skilled trades taught at our newest campus.” That is a statewide projection cited by the company, covering openings across several trades. It is not limited to metro Atlanta and is not a measure of jobs available to UTI graduates.
Smyrna Mayor Derek Norton said the campus arrives as more high school students are “taking a closer look at technical education and careers in these in-demand fields.” Sharon Mason, president and chief executive of the Cobb Chamber, called it “an exciting investment in our community and our future workforce.”
UTI says it operates 35 campuses nationwide and online under the Universal Technical Institute and Concorde Career Colleges brands. The company said a second metro Atlanta campus, Concorde Career College-Atlanta, focused on healthcare and dental training, will open in 2027 pending regulatory approvals.
Questions for prospective students
For anyone weighing the Smyrna campus, the announcement leaves the practical details to be checked directly with the school: total tuition and fees for a specific program, program length, financial aid and scholarship eligibility, accreditation status for the program in question, and graduate employment outcomes for this campus, which, having opened this year, does not yet have a track record of its own.
Sources
- Universal Technical Institute, Inc., “Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Celebrates New Atlanta Campus,” October 21, 2026. https://news.uti.edu/2026-10-21-Universal-Technical-Institute%2C-Inc-Celebrates-New-Atlanta-Campus
- Universal Technical Institute, Inc., “Universal Technical Institute, Inc. Opens New Atlanta Campus, Further Advancing North Star Strategy to Address America’s Labor Shortages,” August 4, 2026. https://news.uti.edu/2026-08-04-Universal-Technical-Institute,-Inc-Opens-New-Atlanta-Campus,-Further-Advancing-North-Star-Strategy-to-Address-Americas-Labor-Shortages
- Universal Technical Institute, “Recruitment Underway for New UTI-Atlanta and UTI-San Antonio Campuses,” February 4, 2026. https://news.uti.edu/2026-02-04-Recruitment-Underway-for-New-UTI-Atlanta-and-UTI-San-Antonio-Campuses
- Universal Technical Institute, UTI Atlanta campus page, accessed October 22, 2026. https://www.uti.edu/locations/atlanta-ga
Featured photo: Universal Technical Institute's campus in Rancho Cucamonga, California, photographed Jan. 19, 2009. Representative image; not the new UTI-Atlanta campus in Smyrna, Ga. Photo: JWut89LA, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Cropped from the original.
