Tuition increases at Iowa’s Regent institutions will be on the agenda for discussion at Wednesday’s Board of Regents meetings, and ISU students may not like what they see.

According to the Regents’ November meeting docket, the board is proposing a 5.2 percent increase for resident students at Iowa State, and a 3.4 percent hike for nonresidents for the 2007-08 academic year. The $266 in-state tuition increase is a 1.2 percent jump over the 4 percent Regents’-approved base tuition increase of a year ago.

“You don’t try to raise tuition as much as you can get away with,” said Gary Steinke, executive director of the Iowa Board of Regents. “You look at what is fair, and how much more money do you need.”

The board recently approved a proposal to request from the State Legislature an additional $72 million in state appropriations for fiscal year 2008, which would help keep tuition increases to the proposed levels. If the legislature – facing the possibility of significant turnover during Tuesday’s general election – doesn’t approve the Regents’ increased funding requests, next school year’s tuition increase will undoubtedly be higher, Steinke said.

“If [the increased funding] doesn’t get approved, then the tuition will increase; there isn’t any question about that. But this is a reasonable tuition request. I believe it’s very doable.”

Without increased help from lawmakers in Des Moines, Roberta Johnson, director of the Student Financial Aid Office, said the university would again have trouble meeting its bottom line, and could lead to greater increases in tuition – like the staggering 18 to 20 percent year-to-year increases of years past.

“If we don’t get that appropriation, that leads to a tough year the next year and increased tuition in the following years,” Johnson said.

Despite resident tuition at Regents institutions rising nearly 85 percent in the last decade, the board doesn’t fear that higher education in Iowa has become unaffordable for many residents of the state, Steinke said. But, he said, board members have kept their eyes on keeping college accessible to all.

“Tuition increases do not affect all students in Iowa equally,” Steinke said. “The most affluent in our society who have college-age kids can send their kids anywhere to college, and they do.

“But for working people in Iowa, tuition is huge. You can say tuition increases affect Iowa’s working families far more than the most affluent in our society. So you try to keep tuition at affordable levels for all people in Iowa.”

The proposed 4.3 percent average undergraduate tuition increase, although slightly more than 2006-07, comes in 2 percent under the most recent national average. According to the College Board’s “Trends In College Pricing,” four-year public universities increased undergraduate tuition by 6.3 percent, and over the past decade tuition has risen at 7 percent per year.

The board convenes for its regular meeting at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and continues Thursday in the Scheman Building.