Base tuition for the fiscal year 2011 is set to increase by 5 percent after the Iowa Board of Regents approved a proposal at Wednesday’s meeting.

When the Regents originally came up with a funding plan, they looked at inflation and the Higher Education Price Index, which is set between 2.2 and 4.1 percent, and looked at the assumption they would be flat funded or slightly less funded.

“We have not actually ran numbers, per se,” said Patrice Sayre, Board of Regents chief business officer. “If we got the governor’s proposed budget, we would need 7 percent to fill the hole. It’s a cut of $36 million.”

Regent Michael Gartner proposed an idea to “try and make tuition as affordable as possible for in-state undergraduates.”

Gartner said a 5 percent increase for in-state undergraduates would give the universities an increase of $17.4 million.

“What I’m saying is that, why don’t we look at a plan for tuition that says if we get nothing — if we get nothing more than we have right now — we raise tuition 5 percent,” Gartner said. “Why wouldn’t we say for every $7 million we get out of the legislature from one way or another, we would roll back tuition for in-state undergraduates by 1 percent.

“If there were another $37 million, the universities would come out ahead,” he said. “There would be no tuition increase, which would be unheard of.”

“If there is no further movement in the legislature, and if heaven forbid there were further cuts, we would agree we would raise tuition more than 5 percent so the legislature would at least understand the impact of this, and that everybody would share if the number rose, and everybody would suffer if the number went down.”

Regent Robert Downer said a similar arrangement had been made before with the legislature.

“I don’t know the exact details, but for every $2 increase, universities would redirect $1 into education,” Downer said.

Downer said he believed the system was in place during fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Miles said he was uneasy passing something like this without talking to the legislature first and said if the universities were funded the same way two years ago, tuition would have to go up 47 percent to recover the losses.

Student Body presidents from each university addressed the Regents on the proposed tuition increases.

“I hear each of you challenging the Regents, and I think you’re right,” Regent Ruth Harkin said to the students. “We’ve been inadequate in sending our message to state political leaders as to what our needs are. It’s something we are going to have to work on.”

“It is important to consider we are already asking universities to do more with less,” Regents President David Miles said. “I would love to find ways we could reach out to the legislature, but the concern that I have is that our expenses will increase, and we will find ourselves moving further and further behind.”