RANDY METCALF/Arizona Daily Wildcat Student government leaders Denny Marta, Jenny Rimsza and Ray Quintero are proposing that UA does not increase in-state tuition. ASUA will come out with its official proposal for next year's tuition rates at a rally Monday.

Editor's note: This is the final article in a three-part series focusing on the University of Arizona's ongoing budget crisis.

Part 1: Paying for the past [4.02.02]

Part 2: Up close and personal [4.03.02]

After years of minimal tuition hikes, administrators see no way to avoid a large tuition increase

Setting tuition for Arizona's public universities the past few years has become as predictable as a square dance.

First, the presidents step to the right with their request. Student government leaders shimmy left with an offer of consumer price index plus 1 percent.

Then, the Arizona Board of Regents spin their partners round and round at hearings so students can tear up and tear at those asking for more money. It all ends with the regents dipping the rate hike just below what the presidents asked for without letting students think the presidents are the ones leading.

This mode of operation developed during years that saw increases, even if small, in funding from the Legislature. The regents were willing to put off large increases until the situation became critical, but at past board meetings, former regent Judy Gignac said the Board of Regent's actions were delaying the inevitable: a tuition increase of 10 percent or more.

With Gov. Jane Dee Hull and the Legislature trying to kill a budgetary shortfall that will not die, the situation has become more critical, and some regents say, the inevitable has come to collect.

MATT CAPOWSKI/Arizona Daily Wildcat UA president Peter Likins, left, and Provost George Davis address the campus community at a Town Hall Tuesday. Both Likins and Davis have said they support aggressive tuition hikes. Likins is expected to release a final tuition proposal today.

Floating figures

"We're going to push for a big tuition increase but want to couple it with financial aid," said Richard Powell, University of Arizona vice president for research and graduate studies.

University President Peter Likins has said that his request for tuition increases this year would be no less than 10 percent. That 10 percent, for in-state students, equals about $250 - more than the two previous increases combined.

On Tuesday, Northern Arizona University President John Haeger announced he would be seeking a 14 percent tuition increase that would require nearly $400 more from in-state students next year.

Though Likins will not announce his proposal until today, in recent years, the university presidents have issued identical requests.

At a Faculty Senate meeting last month, UA Provost George Davis floated the idea of a rate hike as large as $1,500 - more than 60 percent - for in-state students that would be broken up over three to five years.

Though a tuition hike of that size would generate more dollars for the university at a time when millions are floating away in an economic low-tide, it could also move a number of students into financial aid's "needy" category, Arizona Students' Association co-director Jenny Rimsza said.

That, in turn, strains the available sources of aid - primarily federal funds through Pell grants, state tax dollars and tuition revenue, documents obtained from the Board of Regents show.

At a meeting two weeks ago in Yuma, the regents discussed a measure that would allow state universities greater freedom to give out financial aid.

If approved at the board's April 25-26 meeting in Flagstaff, where tuition rates will also be set, the requirements that students must meet to be considered needy will be eased so the universities can give out all available aid.

Students who receive less than $4,000 in assistance from their parents or guardians qualify as needy.

In the past, there have not been enough students who met the requirements to use up all the aid.

Today, when Likins unveils the tuition increase he is hoping for, it will be coupled with a request for financial aid through waivers. The university already forgoes about $30 million of its existing tuition revenue each year by giving out tuition waivers, UA Budget Director Dick Roberts said.

When the Governor's Taskforce for Higher Education released its recommendations, included was the creation of a state-funded grant. The ACE grant was to be worth about $1,000 for every needy Arizona student who had graduated from high school.

The Legislature ignored the idea, Likins said. The only way UA can provide that kind of support for its students is by forgoing additional tuition revenue.

A break in the system

This academic year, UA had about $28 million in aid to distribute to students, said John Nametz, UA director of Financial Aid.

Through its funding of the Board of Regents, the state shells out a certain amount of money for financial aid that is not solely based on the amount of student need.

This year, UA received $4,459,900 from the Legislature for that purpose, according to regents' documents.

One percent of all tuition paid is funneled to UA's financial aid pool, creating a $1.8 million trust this year.

While supporting the action regents might take, Nametz said it is not enough because the pot of money is no bigger, but the number of students it's available to is.

If the regents decide on a 10 percent increase, then many students will be partially shielded from the hike because the Pell Grant, too, will be $250 more.

"We have about 6,400 students that get Pell Grants. Approximately 8,400 are in the grant eligible category, but that eats up all of their increase," Nametz said. "It'd be wrong to say they're completely protected."

"A grant that we have available to students has kept pace with tuition, but mainly, that was because the Pell Grant came up so much," he said.

Despite the fact that the prescribed financial aid increase may swallow a raise in tuition for UA students, Nametz worried that it would not be enough money for the other expenses the aid is intended to cover.

There have been discussions concerning making loans more accessible to students, but according to Board of Regents statistics, upon graduating with a bachelor's degree, the average student owes about $18,000.

"Increasing the opportunity for students to borrow money is not a solution," Likins said.

Inflation drives up the cost of rent, food and other necessities every year that the additional federal dollars would otherwise help pay for. The Pell Grant is awarded to students who receive little or no financial assistance from their parents or guardians.

Across the nation, the Pell Grant's effectiveness has been greatly diminished by large tuition increases. To date, this has not been the case at UA as the Board of Regents has declined increasing the cost to students more than 5 or 6 percent annually, Roberts said.

Tabulating tuition

This academic year, UA earned $125 million from tuition, nearly two-thirds of which was brought from out-of-state students, university budgetary documents state. Of that amount, about $85 million was returned to the state so it could be coupled with the $350 million appropriated before the cuts.

Ten percent more tuition would mean only about $12 million for the university, which is in the second cheapest state for public higher education. Even if the $1,500, three-to-five-year hike suggested by Davis were to be implemented, UA would still be among the bottom third of public institutions for tuition expense.

Half the $40 million retained by UA goes to pay back bonds used for various construction projects around campus, such as the Student Union Memorial Center and Highland Commons.

In the past, student government leaders have argued that if tuition must increase, they should know exactly where the money is going.

Since a majority of tuition is just poured into the state's general fund given from public tax dollars, tracking just where the students' cash is going within the university ranges from difficult to impossible. Roberts said it is spent the same way state tax dollars are: salaries, programs and other maintenance expenses.

Student lobbyist Rimsza, however, said the regents have no reason to increase the rates at all unless they can demonstrate exactly what the funds are needed to pay for.

ASUA President Ray Quintero said there is concern the university would not benefit much from a tuition increase.

Since last October, the Legislature has tossed around a plan that would return half or more of any rate hikes implemented back to the state's general fund.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee has approximated that diverting half the tuition money could free more than $4 million to help ease a $1 billion deficit.

The Legislature has yet to place the proposal in bill form, and Republican House of Representative Appropriations Chair Laura Knaperek, said it would not happen.

"We're not interested in a tuition increase for the general fund," Quintero said.

Student government leaders, as expected, are not interested in any rate hike, and the proposal's existence arms them with a reason outside of costs to their constituents to lessen an increase.

ASUA has planned the unveiling of what it would like to see in a tuition increase at a rally on the Mall, April 8. That rally, student government leaders hope, will start off a week of discussion among students about the issue culminating in tuition hearings on April 16, events that are normally stocked with students' emotional pleas against more expenses.

The regents attend the tuition hearings, held at all three state universities, which is the students' best opportunity to make their case for or against the proposed tuition increases. While hinting that rates may come up more than the $145 approved a year ago, the regents say they have not made up their minds and that the solution to higher education's financial woes is not increased student expense.

"The budgetary shortfall isn't going to be made up in tuition," Board of Regents President Kay McKay said. "We're trying to consider the whole gamut, from zero to 10 percent. It's not a good one this year, none of us think so."

There is no consensus among the regents that 10 percent is as high as the regents would consider hiking tuition or that the university presidents would ask, since neither side has brought forth their proposals, Regent Fred Boice said.

"Amongst the regents, I haven't heard a lot of discussion relative to tuition - but that will no doubt change," he said.