Summary prospectus DECEMBER 4, 2015

TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund

of the TIAA-CREF Funds

Class Ticker: Advisor TGIHX

Before you invest, you may want to review the Fund’s prospectus, which contains more information about the Fund and its risks. You can find the Fund’s prospectus and other information about the Fund online at www.tiaa-cref.org/tfequity_pro. You can also get this information at no cost by calling 800 223-1200 or by sending an e-mail request to disclosure@tiaa-cref.org. The Fund’s prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”), each dated December 4, 2015, as subsequently supplemented, and the sections of the Fund’s shareholder report dated October 31, 2014 and April 30, 2015 from “Summary Portfolio of Investments” through “Notes to Financial Statements,” are incorporated into this Summary Prospectus by reference and may be obtained free of charge at the website, phone number or e-mail address noted above.

Investment objective

The Fund seeks a favorable long-term total return, through both capital appreciation and investment income, primarily from income-producing equity securities.

Fees and expenses

This table describes the fees and expenses that you may pay if you buy and hold shares of the Fund:

SHAREHOLDER FEES (fees paid directly from your investment)

	Advisor Class
Maximum sales charge imposed on purchases (percentage of offering price)	0%
Maximum deferred sales charge	0%
Maximum sales charge imposed on reinvested dividends and other distributions	0%
Redemption or exchange fee	0%
Maximum account fee	0%

TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund ■Summary Prospectus     1

ANNUAL FUND OPERATING EXPENSES (expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)

	Advisor Class
Management fees	0.40%
Distribution (Rule 12b-1) fees	—
Other expenses1	0.13%
Total annual Fund operating expenses	0.53%
Waivers and expense reimbursements2	—
Total annual Fund operating expenses after fee waiver and/or expense reimbursement	0.53%

1

Estimates for the current fiscal year.

2

Under the Fund’s expense reimbursement arrangements, the Fund’s investment adviser, Teachers Advisors Inc., has contractually agreed to reimburse the Fund for any Total Annual Operating Expenses (excluding interest, taxes, brokerage commissions or other transactional expenses, Acquired Fund Fees and Expenses and extraordinary expenses) that exceed 0.67% of the average daily net assets for Advisor Class shares of the Fund. These expense reimbursement arrangements will continue through at least December 3, 2016, unless changed with approval of the Board of Trustees.

Example

This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in shares of the Fund with the cost of investing in other mutual funds. The example assumes that you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated and then redeem all your shares at the end of those periods. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year and that the Fund’s operating expenses, before expense reimbursements, remain the same. The example assumes that the Fund’s expense reimbursement agreement will remain in place through December 3, 2016, but that there will be no waiver or expense reimbursement agreement in effect thereafter. Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, based on these assumptions your costs would be:

	Advisor Class
1 year	$	54
3 years	$	170

Portfolio turnover

The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes when Fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in annual fund operating expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. During the fiscal year ended October 31, 2014, the Fund’s portfolio turnover rate was 98% of the average value of its portfolio.

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Principal investment strategies

Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its assets in equity securities. In seeking a favorable long-term total return, the Fund will invest in securities which the Fund’s investment adviser, Teachers Advisors, Inc. (“Advisors”), believes have the potential for capital appreciation, dividend income, or both. The Fund focuses on large-cap securities that Advisors believes to be attractively valued, show the potential to appreciate faster than the rest of the market and return cash to shareholders in the form of dividends, stock buy-backs or both. Advisors seeks to construct a portfolio whose weighted average market capitalization is similar to the Fund’s benchmark index, the Standard & Poor’s 500^®Index (the “S&P 500^®Index”).

Advisors generally looks for companies that it believes are leaders in their respective industries, with sustainable competitive advantages. Advisors also looks for companies that it believes have management teams that are dedicated to creating shareholder value. The Fund may invest up to 20% of its assets in foreign issuers when Advisors believes these issuers offer more attractive investment opportunities.

Principal investment risks

You could lose money over short or long periods by investing in this Fund. An investment in the Fund, due to the nature of the Fund’s portfolio holdings, typically is subject to the following principal investment risks:

·Market Risk—The risk that market prices of portfolio investments held by the Fund may fall rapidly or unpredictably due to a variety of factors, including changing economic, political or market conditions. Market risk may affect a single issuer, industry or sector of the economy, or it may affect the market as a whole.

·Issuer Risk (often called Financial Risk)—The risk that an issuer’s earnings prospects and overall financial position will deteriorate, causing a decline in the value of the issuer’s financial instruments over short or extended periods of time.

·Large-Cap Risk—The risk that large-capitalization companies are more mature and may grow more slowly than the economy as a whole and tend to go in and out of favor based on market and economic conditions.

·Style Risk—The risk that use of a particular investing style (such as growth or valueinvesting) may fall out of favor in the marketplace for various periods of time and result in underperformance relative to the broader market sector or significant declines in the value of the Fund’s portfolio investments.

·Risks of Growth Investing—Due to their relatively high valuations, growth stocks are typically more volatile than value stocks and may experience a larger decline on a forecast of lower earnings, or a negative event or market development, than would a value stock.

TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund ■Summary Prospectus     3

·Active Management Risk—The risk that Advisors’ strategy, investment selection or trading execution may cause the Fund to underperform relative to the benchmark index or mutual funds with similar investment objectives.

·Foreign Investment Risk—Foreign markets can be more volatile than the U.S. market due to increased risks of adverse issuer, political, regulatory, currency, market or economic developments and can result in greater price volatility and perform differently from financial instruments of U.S. issuers. This risk may be heightened in emerging or developing markets. Foreign investments may also be less liquid and more difficult to value than investments in U.S. issuers.

Please see the non-summary portion of the Prospectus for more detailed information about the risks described above.

Past performance

The following chart and table help illustrate some of the risks of investing in the Fund by showing changes in the Fund’s performance from year to year. Because the Fund only recently began offering Advisor Class shares, the performance information shown is for the Fund’s existing classes, which would have substantially similar annual returns to the new Advisor Class because all of the Fund’s classes are invested in the same portfolio of securities with the only difference being that the classes do not have the same expenses. The bar chart shows the annual total returns of the Institutional Class of the Fund, before taxes, in each full calendar year for the last ten years. Because the expenses vary across share classes, the performance of the Institutional Class may vary from the other share classes. Below the bar chart are the best and worst returns of the Institutional Class for a calendar quarter during the full calendar-year periods covered by the bar chart. The performance table following the bar chart shows the Fund’s average annual total returns for the Institutional, Retirement, Premier and Retail Classes over the applicable one-year, five-year, ten-year and since-inception periods ended December 31, 2014, and how those returns compare to those of the Fund’s benchmark index. After-tax performance is also shown only for Institutional Class shares, and after-tax returns for the other classes of shares will vary from the after-tax returns presented for Institutional Class shares. The performance in the bar chart and table has not been restated to reflect any difference between the existing classes’ expenses and estimated Advisor Class expenses. Because existing class shares generally are expected to have different expenses than Advisor Class shares, if the charts below had been restated with Advisor Class expenses, performance would have differed.

The returns shown below reflect previous agreements by Advisors to waive or reimburse the Fund for certain fees and expenses. Without these waivers and reimbursements, the returns of the Fund would have been lower. Past performance of the Fund (before and after taxes) is not necessarily an indication of how it will perform in the future. The benchmark index listed below is

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unmanaged, and you cannot invest directly in an index. The returns for the benchmark index reflect no deduction for fees, expenses or taxes.

For current performance information of each share class, including performance to the most recent month-end, please visit www.tiaa-cref.org.

ANNUAL TOTAL RETURNS FOR THE INSTITUTIONAL CLASS SHARES (%)^†

Growth & Income Fund

^†The year-to-date return as of the most recent calendar quarter, which ended on September 30, 2015, was -3.16%.

Best quarter: 16.17%, for the quarter ended September 30, 2009. Worst quarter: -19.97%, for the quarter ended December 31, 2008.

TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund ■Summary Prospectus     5

AVERAGE ANNUAL TOTAL RETURNS

For the Periods Ended December 31, 2014

		Inception Date	One Year		Five Years		Ten Years
Institutional Class		7/1/1999
	Return Before Taxes		11.26	%	15.20	%	9.51	%
	Return After Taxes on Distributions		8.26	%	13.46	%	8.18	%
	Return After Taxes on Distributions and Sale of
	Fund Shares		7.93	%	11.92	%	7.56	%
Retail Class		3/31/2006
	Return Before Taxes		10.87	%	14.86	%	9.33	%*
Retirement Class		10/1/2002
	Return Before Taxes		10.92	%	14.92	%	9.23	%
Premier Class		9/30/2009
	Return Before Taxes		11.09	%	15.04	%	9.44	%*
S&P 500® Index
(reflects no deductions for fees, expenses or taxes)			13.69	%	15.45	%	7.67	%
Current performance of the Fund’s shares may be higher or lower than that shown above.
*	The performance shown for the Retail Class and Premier Class that is prior to their inception date is based on performance of the Fund’s Institutional Class. The performance for these periods has not been restated to reflect higher expenses of the Retail Class and Premier Class. If those expenses had been reflected, the performance would have been lower.
After-tax returns are calculated using the historical highest individual federal marginal income tax rates in effect during the periods shown and do not reflect the impact of state and local taxes. Actual after-tax returns depend on the investor’s tax situation and may differ from those shown. The after-tax returns shown are not relevant to investors who hold their Fund shares through tax-deferred arrangements such as 401(a), 401(k) or 403(b) plans or Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). After-tax returns are shown for only one class, and after-tax returns for other classes will vary.

Portfolio management

Investment Adviser. The Fund’s investment adviser is Teachers Advisors, Inc.

Portfolio Manager. The following person manages the Fund on a day-to-day basis:

Name:	Susan Kempler
Title:	Managing Director
Experience on Fund:	since 2005

Purchase and sale of Advisor Class shares

Advisor Class shares are available for purchase through certain financial intermediaries, employee benefit plans and insurance company separate accounts. The Fund also offers Institutional, Retirement, Premier and Retail Class shares, which are offered through another prospectus that contains information about their respective eligibility criteria.

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Redeeming or Exchanging Shares. You can redeem (sell) or exchange your shares of the Fund on any day that the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) is open for business. Exchanges may be made for shares of the same share class of other funds offered by the Trust. If your shares are held through a third party, please contact that entity for applicable redemption or exchange requirements.

Tax information

The Fund intends to make distributions to shareholders that may be taxed as ordinary income or capital gains. Distributions made to tax-exempt shareholders or shareholders who hold Fund shares in a tax-deferred account are generally not subject to income tax in the current year, but redemptions made from tax-deferred accounts may be subject to income tax.

Payments to broker-dealers and other financial intermediary compensation

If you purchase shares of the Fund through a broker-dealer or other financial intermediary (such as a bank), the Fund and/or its related companies may pay the financial intermediary for providing investor services. The Fund’s related companies may also pay the financial intermediary for the sale of Fund shares and related services. These payments may create a conflict of interest by influencing the broker-dealer or other financial intermediary and your salesperson to recommend the Fund over another investment. Ask your salesperson or visit your financial intermediary’s website for more information.

TIAA-CREF Growth & Income Fund ■Summary Prospectus     7

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A15134 (12/15)