Tuition is high, and it may be getting higher for those in the international community.

The recent Iowa Board of Regents meeting has caused questioning among Iowa State’s international community in regards to a proposed annual tuition increase that could affect current and incoming students from outside the United States.

Concluding its two-day meeting Oct. 17, the board brought to attention the request for tuition of all international, non-immigrant students to be increased by $500 annually. This proposal would bring the annual cost of attending Iowa State from around $29,960, including room and board, to more than $34,000 across four years for the undergraduate program, according to the Office of Admissions.

According to the university, these additional funds will be used to further educate and keep up with the growing international population. The current enrollment number for international students is 3,980, an increase of nearly 200 students from the 3,797 enrolled last fall.

Though the proposal was created to help fund future functions inside the international program, not all foreign students are on board with the university’s plan for using the extra funds.

“I would not oppose the increase, as much as I would make sure that each $500 increase would be going toward the international students’ benefit,” said Vivek Lawana, a graduate student in biomedical sciences.

As an executive member of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, Lawana has not seen a clear path regarding where the money will be spent, a problem he sees moving forward into the Board of Regents’ vote in December.

“None of us [GPSS Board], to be very frank, has a really clear idea of what it is,” Lawana said. “It came to our notice about a month ago and we thought that is was something new and the administration would talk more about it. Then all of the sudden we noticed that it’s at the Board of Regents.”

Lawana not only sees the issue as a point of confusion for himself but also for other international students.

“When you ask a student to pay five more dollars their first question will probably be, ‘Why?,’ even if only for $5,” Lawana said. “This is $500 we are talking about, so you have to ask, Why? If you then ask why and don’t get a clear answer, say 25 percent is going here and 15 percent here, then it creates a lack of confidence.”

Zain Amin, sophomore in finance and historian for the Association of Malaysian Students, doesn’t believe the tuition increase will affect him positively.

“When I first knew about this, I was quite surprised and feel that an increase in tuition fees will kind of burden me,” Amin said. “This is mainly because right now my country’s currency is pretty low. Maybe $500 doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you change it into our currency it really does make a difference.

As part of moving to a new country, foreign students often come to the United States packing very little, making the first semester a costly venture and the proposed tuition increase a possible obstacle.

“As an international student during the first semester we have to buy everything,” Lawana said. “We don’t have domestic parents or friends to help us out so we have to get everything from Walmart, along with clothes and phone services. It’s a lot of pressure for us and our parents. So if you just waive the fee for the first semester of the school year it would help reduce the weight of coming here.”

Though a graduate student himself, Lawana would like to see the funds create programs to help international students become more accustomed to life in in the United States, in order to avoid issues he had as a freshman.

“When I first came to America I didn’t know how to get to Ames from Des Moines, so I spent almost $50 getting here because I was scared to ask,” Lawana said. “So I suggest they use that money to provide a bus service for all international students coming to ISU from the airport before the move-in week and possibly provide a night’s stay in the empty dorms.”

Whether the current tuition plan will be initiated is unknown at the moment, and it remains to be voted on at the next Board of Regents meeting in December.

“I don’t think that we need to increase the tuition fee in order to help the international program,” Amin said. “The program right now works just fine for me,” Amin said.