A plan that would guarantee a set tuition for a student for all four years of school has received mixed reactions from Iowa officials.

In the face of uncertain tuition increases, Iowa House of Representatives Speaker Christopher Rants proposed Thursday to examine a “Tuition Stability Act” — a plan that would guarantee a freshman student the same tuition for four years of university education.

“We want to make sure that when a person starts school their freshman year, they can count on a stable tuition all four years,” Rants said in a statement. “I would hope the Board of Regents will give serious consideration to this proposal.

“These past few years have placed an enormous burden on family budgets, and we need to stabilize tuition in order to help students focus on what is really important — their studies.”

Another benefit of guaranteeing the same tuition for four straight years will be giving students incentive to finish their degree within that time span, Rants said.

“How can families plan for the future when a double-digit tuition increase might be lurking around the corner?” he said.

Simply guaranteeing a fixed tuition rate would not make Iowa’s budget woes disappear, said Greg Nichols, executive director of the Iowa Board of Regents.

If tuition rates were fixed, the cost of tuition won’t decrease and the incoming class will pay significantly more to fill in the revenue gap.

“Predictable tuition should not be defined as simply shifting the cost from one group of students to another,” Nichols said. “The long-term issue of ensuring predictability in tuition depends on stable appropriations to Iowa’s three public universities.”

Fixing tuition would be a risky procedure in the face of unpredictable cuts in state support — the cause of recent tuition hikes — possibly causing the state to collect an insufficient amount of yearly revenue from the universities, he said.

Rep. Jim Kurtenbach, R-Nevada, said the Tuition Stability Act is an option that should be explored because the act would help families and students plan their budget.

“There are many different proposals that will come up and they all need to be explored; none should be looked at in isolation,” said Kurtenbach, associate professor of accounting. “This particular act would encourage [students] to graduate in a timely fashion.”

In the ten years prior to fiscal year 2003—04, the average tuition increase was 4.3 percent. However, tuition has increased over 50 percent the last three years.

Rants’ proposal is based on laws in Illinois and Michigan that are attempts to stabilize the tuition rates. The Illinois act, which took effect in June 2003, freezes resident tuition at the freshman level for the four years of stay at the university.

At Michigan State University, a tuition guarantee was established in December of 1994. In that law, tuition cannot rise faster than the rate of inflation.

The Iowa bill is currently being drafted, and scenarios and their budget impacts are being studied.