Future tuition hikes likely won't outpace the nation's tuition inflation rate, but shouldn't be compared to the consumer price index or other measures that reflect a broader set of industries, President Peter Likins said yesterday.

That statement wasn't a direct rebuke of Gov. Janet Napolitano, who said last month that she hoped future tuition hikes would take the form of "small inflationary adjustments."

But it did reflect Likins' sentiment that future tuition increases should be larger than simple adjustments to reflect changes in the consumer price index, which rose less than 2 percent in the past year.

The recently approved $490 tuition hike, by contrast, was an approximately 14 percent increase, and tuition at the UA's peer institutions has risen, on average, 7.2 percent annually in recent years, according to student lobbyists' figures.

"We're certainly not, in any rational sense, connected to the consumer price index," Likins said.

Likins' statement came in response to a question from astronomy department head Peter Strittmatter, who asked Likins at yesterday's faculty senate meeting if he wanted to respond to Napolitano, who said she'd actively oppose future large tuition increases.

Likins didn't respond directly to Napolitano's criticism, but has said repeatedly in the past that he'd like to see UA tuition keep pace with the top of the bottom third of comparable public universities.

Napolitano worries that continued tuition increases could price some middle class students out of being able to afford a university education.

Likins and regents have said that increases in financial aid, which have been paired with the most recent tuition hike as well as last year's $1,000 boost, can alleviate some of those fears.

But they have also acknowledged that though the financial aid increases have improved affordability for some of the neediest students, they have impaired others' ability to afford an education.

Likins also tried yesterday to ease any fears that the UA might try to exceed that level, but said he doesn't want UA tuition to be the lowest in the country, as it was last year.

"I trust we will never again find ourselves at the bottom," he said.