A 6 percent tuition hike approved by the state Board of Regents last year is pushing many out-of-state students to try to establish Iowa residency in order to cut costs.

Nonresident tuition is annually set by the Regents at roughly three times that of resident tuition.

Regent Tom Collins said nonresidents actually pay full tuition, while resident students pay just a fraction of their tuition. The rest, he said, is subsidized by the state.

“The theory behind it is, we shouldn’t be subsidizing out-of-state people. We shouldn’t be penalizing them either,” Collins said.

Just over 29 percent of ISU students paid nonresident rates in 1994, according to the Office of Institutional Research Factbook. Of those, almost 19 percent, or about 4,500 students, are eligible to claim residency because they are U.S. citizens.

“There is that temptation to go ahead and claim, but it’s not easy,” said Maggie Doyle, an ISU student in English and a Missouri resident. “It’s a real commitment.”

In order to claim residency, students must prove to the Office of the Registrar that they:

*Are financially independent from their parents, including federal income tax purposes.

*Earn enough money to support themselves.

*Have lived and worked in Iowa for one calendar year while not enrolled with more than four college credits a semester.

Many factors make claiming residency a difficult process, including forfeiting financial support from scholarships, grants and parents, said Judy Minnick, the university’s residency classification officer. Minnick said the prospect of setting back graduation is often the most difficult.

“They have to be willing to drop down to half time status for a year,” Minnick said. “We are allowing students to pick up part-time credit. Some other states prohibit students from taking any classes during the year that they claim residency.”

Regent President Marvin Pomerantz said regulations regarding residency are not set to dissuade students from claiming residency.”They’re not designed to do anything but have clarity around who is a resident and who isn’t,” Pomerantz said.

Jenn Sears, a student in landscape architecture, will be a resident of Maine until next May, when her claim for Iowa residency will be complete.

“With tuition rising above my scholarship, it makes sense [to claim residency],” Sears said.

Sears’ in-state tuition at a Maine school would have been more expensive than out-of-state tuition at ISU, so she came to ISU with financial support from her parents and an ROTC scholarship.

Sears said the ROTC scholarship pays for most of her tuition, but requires her to serve in the armed forces after graduation for the same number of years that she received the scholarship. If Sears decides not to honor her military commitment, she must pay back the scholarship, she said.

“It’s a lot easier to pay back in-state than out-of-state [tuition],” Sears said. She added that the ROTC scholarship doesn’t cover the summer sessions she needs to complete her degree on time.

Still, Sears said the choice to claim residency was a tough one.

“It’s kind of like a toss up between knowing that I have to delay my school here for another year and the fact that minimum wage jobs don’t meet the cost of living,” she said.

Sears suggested that other nonresident students explore their options before deciding to claim residency. “Try scholarships and financial aid,” she said.

Rachel Jacobs, a student in political science and international studies, successfully made a claim for residency in 1993 after coming to the United States from Auckland, New Zealand. She moved to Iowa in 1992 and wanted to attend Iowa State.

“They told me not to go to school until I worked for a year so I could claim residency,” Jacobs said.

Since Jacobs’ father was a U.S. citizen, Jacobs was, too, but she had no “state of residency,” she said.

It was difficult to earn enough money to prove that she was financially independent while taking a few college credits, Jacobs said.

“It was hard to go to school, to actually remember to go to class when I was working 60 hours a week,” she said.

Jacobs said paying resident tuition was worth the year it took to establish residency. “I couldn’t have afforded [out-of-state tuition],” she said.

Other students should carefully consider claiming residency, Jacobs said.

“They have to remember they’re here for a whole year, because you can’t go home for the summer. It’s a long time to be away from your family,” she added.

For some, the drawbacks just are not worth it.

“I can’t imagine having to drop back my graduation when I’m behind already,” Doyle said. “Then there is that chance that I will want to go ahead and go to graduate school somewhere else.”

Doyle said she will find other ways to pay her nonresident tuition.

“It would be a financial hardship for [my parents] not to claim me on taxes and a financial hardship for me to support myself,” she said.

Doyle said she was considering enrolling at Des Moines Area Community College for the year it would take to claim residency at ISU.

DMACC residency standards are less strict. Students are eligible to pay resident tuition at DMACC if they have lived in Iowa only 90 days before their first term, and if they apply for and prove their residency before tuition rates are adjusted, according to the 1994-95 DMACC catalog.

“But being a resident at DMACC is not the same as being a resident at Iowa State,” Doyle said. “The only thing I could really do is go to DMACC for only part-time credits.”

There are no records of how many ISU students go through the process of claiming residency each year, Minnick said.

“I may talk to anywhere from 800-1,000 students in a year,” Minnick said, adding that most of them do not end up claiming residency. “I would say it’s a very small percentage.”

Minnick said the majority of students that claim residency are undergraduates with no other way to help pay tuition.