Students should expect to see a series of large tuition increases in upcoming years, President Peter Likins said yesterday, reiterating his plans to ask for tuition to be set at the 33rd percentile of major state universities.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Arizona Daily Wildcat editors, Likins and Provost George Davis said students should expect the UA's tuition to continue rising as universities around the country raise theirs.

Likins said, as he has previously, that beginning this year, he will ask the Arizona Board of Regents to set tuition at the level equivalent to the top of the bottom third of senior public universities.

Last year's $1,000 tuition increase didn't bring Arizona's universities to this level. Had the regents wanted to reach it, they would have had to raise tuition by $1,260 instead of $1,000.

That means students should expect at least a $260 increase next year, depending on where other universities have set their tuition this year.

"The size will be dependent on what other universities do," said Davis, who will assume the title of executive vice president and provost on Monday.

No matter how large the increase necessary to reach the top of the bottom one third, Likins said he will ask for it when regents set tuition for the 2004-2005 school year.

"If that's $500, I'll ask for $500. If that's $1,100, I'll ask for $1,100."

In the interview, Likins and Davis discussed several other issues they expect will stay at the forefront as the school year progresses.

With the U.S. Supreme Court having affirmed the appropriateness of using race as one of many criteria in making admissions decisions, the UA can now tailor its standards to include race as one of many factors, Likins said.

Race hasn't played a significant role in the admissions process here, because the UA is not very selective, he said. But beginning in 2006, Arizona's universities will have more control over whom to admit, and must develop criteria that fall within the court's guidelines, Likins said.

The Supreme Court isn't validating race as an admissions factor as payment for past injustices, Likins said. Rather, the court wants universities to become more diverse in order to create an environment in which students can better prepare for the real world.

"The world has changed and America has become a multiethnic nation in a multiethnic society," Likins said.

If that's $500, I'll ask for $500. If that's $1,100, I'll ask for $1,100. - Peter Likins UA President

Becoming more diverse while simultaneously raising admissions standards will be one of the UA's major challenges in coming years, Likins said.

And as part of the summer's administrative restructuring, he appointed his senior associate, Patti Ota, as a vice president who will be charged with overseeing that task. She has a complex job, he said, one that calls for experience. Ota worked in enrollment management at a different university.

"That requires a focused effort by seasoned professionals," Likins said. "Now we have 100 percent of Patti Ota focused on it."

Though Likins has said he wants to see the UA become an officially designated "Hispanic-serving institution," he said it would be impossible to meet that goal by the time he retires in 2006.

"That just cannot happen," he said. "That'll evolve over time."

To get this recognition, 25 percent of a university's enrollment must be Hispanic and half of those students must be needy.

Last school year, just over 13 percent of UA students were Hispanic.

Many programs that face elimination, merger or reorganization under Focused Excellence will learn their fates by January, Likins and Davis also said.

As the fall semester progresses, a variety of committees made up of faculty, staff and students will weigh in on what should happen with controversial proposals like that to close the School of Planning and the Humanities Program.

Then, Likins and Davis will make final decisions on whether the changes should proceed, and will send them to the board of regents for final approval.

Four teams have also been formed this year to study the possibility of reorganizing several areas of the university which Likins and Davis have identified as strengths, but that might not be organized to take advantage of those strengths.

Those academic disciplines are:

· Life sciences
· Cognitive sciences and neurosciences
· Cultural, ethnic, area and gender studies
· Earth sciences and environmental programs

Likins and Davis emphasized that reorganizations in these disciplines won't mean that the university will be grouped into four colleges, but that they're areas of importance that require study before any changes can be made.

This summer's administrative restructuring should also not be correlated with the raises some of Likins' closest advisers are receiving, Likins said.

The board of regents had asked Likins to address a growing disparity between top administrators' salaries at the UA and ASU, where a number of vice presidents have gotten raises in the last year.

"The regents became alarmed about the disparity between our two institutions," Likins said.

He responded to that problem by offering an average 6.9 percent salary increase to his most senior advisers, a move he called "demoralizing" and harmful to other UA employees, who haven't seen similar raises.

Many of these top administrators make over $150,000 a year. With the raise, Davis, Likins' top adviser, makes $225,000.

But he also said that these administrators' salaries still lag behind ASU's and the national average.