The Board of Regents will hold its monthly meeting next week, and the deadline is drawing near for Government of the Student Body President Matt Craft’s formal presentation on next year’s tuition increase.

Craft has been selected to represent Iowa State at the meeting in Des Moines, where he will provide input as to what he and GSB members deem a fair tuition hike for ISU.

“We’re really getting crunched for time here because we still haven’t gotten the docket with the numbers we need to finish our presentation,” said Craft, senior in political science and pre-law. “We’ve done everything else we can, but until we get information from the regents, it’s tough to be complete.”

This month’s docket, or agenda, is particularly important to Craft and other GSB representatives. Discussion concerning what percentage tuition will rise for next year begins this month, and a decision will be handed down by the Board of Regents near the end of October.

“It seems like we could’ve had the numbers a bit earlier than we’re getting it, but we’ll be all right,” Craft said. “It’s just tougher to give a polished presentation.”

Frank Stork, executive director of the board, said the time frame for delivering the docket to university representatives is on par with past years.

“The docket will continue to be worked on late tonight and will hopefully be finished tonight or tomorrow,” he said. “So [Craft] and others should have a copy of it in their hands by Thursday morning, barring any problems.”

Board member Ellengray Kennedy said she and the eight other members are in the same boat.

“We haven’t seen the docket yet, either,” she said. “And we’ll get it at the exact same time they do, giving us just as much time to review it as them before next week’s meeting.”

Craft is concerned because tuition increases seem to have been a bit steeper the past couple of years compared to previous years.

“We know there’s going to be an increase,” he said. “So we’re just trying to make sure that the increase is fair for our students, and that it doesn’t go up too much.”

According to numbers provided by Stork, the increase percentages for the last five years have fluctuated between 3.5 for the 1996-1997 term and 4.5 for this year’s increase.

“Looking at them, the numbers have remained fairly steady,” Stork said. “There was a bit more of an increase for this year, but that’s for good reason.”

That reason, he said, is a change in the policy the board uses to determine the appropriate increase.

“Before last year, we used only the Education Price Index or EPI,” Stork said. “The EPI is a number calculated by the Research Associates, a professional research group, using data such as inflation and income level. The number they come up with is passed along to us, and we used it to set the increase.”

This year, however, the board used not only the EPI in determining the increase but also took into consideration money necessary for improvements at the three regent universities.