Faculty senators disagreed at their meeting yesterday on how to keep a university education affordable for as many people as possible while dealing with rising budget cuts.

The debate centered on a proposal scheduled to come before the Arizona Board of Regents this month that would allow universities more freedom to allocate financial aid.

Most senators who spoke agreed that a financial aid structure that is accessible to low-income students must be coupled with tuition hikes - which the university's top two administrators have already said they will support.

University President Peter Likins said a financial aid plan that allows students to augment federally funded Pell Grants with state-funded grants are a key factor in keeping tuition affordable for poorer students.

He said that when he served on the Governor's Task Force for Higher Education, the group proposed to offer $1,000 grants to students who qualified for Pell Grants.

But Likins said the state Legislature, which he and other senators characterized as uninterested in higher education, has not responded to that plan.

"I've just been dismayed at the lack of interest," he said.

Likins, who will officially announce later this week his recommendation for next year's tuition, has already said he supports a "double-digit" percent increase - which translates to at least $250.

Several senators expressed concern that an increased reliance on need-based aid could dramatically impact middle-class students. Senators said that although many middle-income students do not qualify for aid, they need to work many hours to pay for tuition and other school-related costs.

"The people who get squeezed are the people in the middle," said Sen. J.D. Garcia.

Likins disagreed, citing a nationwide shift in financial aid allocation that places an increasingly important value on merit-based aid.

"It's a middle-class illusion that the middle class is getting squeezed," he said, adding that there are "not many poor people" among the group that receives merit-based aid.

Faculty chairman Jory Hancock said that although Arizona's tuition remains the second-lowest in the country, the state recieved only a C+ on accessibility in a recent survey.

He said that an aggressive tuition hike would actually increase university accessibility to the poor, because the increased revenue from tuition could be diverted to financial aid for needy students.

Provost George Davis also asked the senators to remember that tuition hikes would alleviate problems with faculty retention and colleges' abilities to fund technology and support.

He also reinforced his support of "robust" tuition increases, which he says are necessary to maintain high educational standards at the university and keep departments from upping faculty workload while cutting operating expenses.

"Faculty are working with less and less," he said.

Davis told the Senate last month that he would favor a tuition increase of $1,500 over the next three to five years.

Sen. Marlys Witte, who said she supports free university tuition, said she was not convinced that having renowned professors actually translates into a better education for students. "Many students do not get their dollars' worth," she said.

She noted that many students believe their best teachers are ordinary faculty, not those who bring huge research grants.

Davis and Likins will be available to discuss tuition, as well as university legislative initiatives and a proposal to bring a cancer research consortium to Arizona, at a Campus Town Hall today at noon at the DuVal Auditorium on the Arizona Health Sciences Campus.