Tuition for medical school students will not be decided at this Thursday's Arizona Board of Regents meeting - where tuition for all other UA students will be set - due to an administrative error.

University of Arizona President Peter Likins issued his recommendations for tuition increases for most graduate and undergraduate programs on April 4, but the UA College of Medicine was omitted from his recommendation.

Medical students got an e-mail April 11 about an April 16 tuition hearing, giving them less than the 10 days of advanced notice required under Arizona Board of Regents policy. Likins will propose that Regents raise medical school tuition by $914 next year.

"We weren't aware of the original hearing, and we didn't get enough time," said Ruth Franks, chairwoman of the College of Medicine Student Government.

The mistake was unintentional, said Patti Ota, Likins' senior associate.

A new tuition hearing has been scheduled for May 3, from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the College of Medicine building, Room 2117. Regents will set tuition some time between the May 3 hearing and a June 20 Arizona Board of Regents meeting said Norma Salas, Regents Assistant for Public Affairs.

However, the newly scheduled hearing comes just half an hour after second-year medical school students finish their first round of final examinations, said Franks, a second-year medicine student.

The College of Medicine Student Government came out yesterday in support of the 9.4 percent tuition increase recommended by College of Medicine Dean Bill Dalton. If the Regents approve Dalton's recommendation as is, tuition and fees would total $10,652 next year.

"Our stance reflects a compromise between not wanting our tuition to increase yet not allowing our education to suffer," said Franks and College of Medicine Student Government Vice Chairwoman Jennifer Slocum in a statement to students yesterday.

Franks and Slocum said that because of recent budget cuts in state funding and a lack of public sympathy for well-paid doctors paying off large debts, the student government proposed that tuition be increased and the revenue go to paying for some of the more expensive equipment medical school students must now buy on their own.

Medical students are currently required to purchase opthalamoscopes for $400 each.

More than half of the UA students who spoke at the April 16 tuition hearing were medical students speaking against Dalton's proposed tuition increase.

Though increasing tuition won't begin to replace lost revenues in a year where budget cuts have meant cutting back tutors in one of the more difficult medicine courses and asking researchers to apply for more grants, an increase is necessary, Dalton said.

First and second-year medical school students have also lost use of free pagers as part of the budget cuts, Franks said.

A tuition increase of $914 would still keep the UA in the bottom third of medical schools for tuition nationwide, Dalton and Franks said.

But an increase of about 4 percent - or about $390 - would be more in line with what students and the American Medical Association find acceptable for keeping pace with inflation, said Sean Liston, a third-year medical student and vice speaker for the medical student section of the American Medical Association.

UA medicine students typically graduate $75,000 in debt, according to College of Medicine financial aid data.

The national average for medical school graduate debt was $93,000 in 2000, according to the American Medical Association.