The Arizona Board of Regents debated amending a proposed differential tuition plan, which would vary tuition by major, at their meeting in the Memorial Union Friday.
Differential tuition, along with special-program and additional-class fees, would vary between individual colleges on campus, said Mark Denke, ABOR's assistant director of academic and student affairs.
Regent President Christina Palacios said the amendments were just potential guidelines for setting differential tuition for the Arizona universities.
"It includes much-needed criteria for the presidents to use," Palacios said. "It will be helpful when deciding if this should be adopted."
The Regents have discussed this subject before in terms of potential fees for the Arizona universities. But they have added several amendments to the fee proposals since their December meeting at UA. The amendments included:
Requiring the universities to guarantee admission for qualified students who can't afford the differential amount.
Requiring each college to provide an obvious reason for the varied cost of tuition, like lab fees or special-class fees.
Student involvement when setting the prices for the different colleges.
Assuring that differential tuition, when above the price of the current base tuition, must increase the quality of learning for the student.
Regents have expressed concern that majors with lower tuition would receive fewer resources than more-expensive majors.
Some ASU students also spoke to the Regents during the call to audience at Thursday's meeting because they disagreed with differential tuition, despite the amendments.
Richard Sales, senator for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said he was concerned differential tuition would put a price tag on majors.
"Treat them equally because everything is important in this environment," Sales said. "Differential tuition undermines the fundamental principle of higher education."
Differential tuition could also make it harder for students to change their majors, Sales said.
"We need to value the importance of all majors in all colleges," he said.
Yaser Alamoodi, former Undergraduate Student Government president, said he met many students during his presidency who had concerns about differential tuition.
Differential tuition could give more resources to the more-expensive majors, leaving students in less-expensive majors with fewer resources, Alamoodi said.
The logistics of differential tuition, like financial aid and advising, aren't easy, he added.
Some Regents were also concerned about these and other issues regarding differential tuition.
Student Regent Ed Hermes said differential tuition could have some students paying more than the maximum tuition base price, which ABOR sets.
According to ABOR policy, tuition at Arizona universities may not exceed the top of the bottom one-third of rates set by peer institutions.
The average tuition students would pay could also exceed this amount, Hermes said.
"This could take us down a road where students would make decisions on their major based on what they can afford," he said.
Regent Robert Bulla agreed this could potentially be a problem.
"It would be very easy for us to screw around [with tuition in] the bottom one-third in different areas," he said.
Student Regent Benjamin Graff said a solution might be to allow each university to determine its own maximum tuition rate. The universities could price their own college tuitions based on their peer programs, instead of keeping tuition as an institution-wide base, he said.
"We've tested the waters, but we're on the brink of diving into differential tuition," Graff said.
The main objectives are to keep it affordable by awarding financial aid accordingly, he added.
Regent Jack Jewett said it might be difficult for the Arizona universities to reach ABOR's goal of being top-10 schools while keeping tuition below the maximum rate.
"I think we can do that," Jewett said. "We cannot lose focus on the importance of financial aid."
Hermes said the concept of tuition not exceeding the statewide tuition bracket has become a safety net for students, because no matter how much tuition increases, they know it will only increase up to that amount.
"With [differential tuition], I see it taking away that safety net for students," he said. "We need to work with students to put that comfort back in there."
The Regents will not vote on these topics until they set tuition rates for Fall 2006 at their March meeting.
Reach the reporter at tara.brite@asu.edu.
