SEMO TO CONSIDER $4 CREDIT-HOUR TUITION HIKE

Southeast Missouri State University officials are looking at hiking incidental fees by $4 a credit hour for the 1992-93 academic year.

The plan also calls for narrowing the "plateau" of credit hours in which students pay the same tuition or incidental fee.

Currently, students taking 12-16 credit hours pay the same amount of tuition. The plan calls for narrowing the plateau to 13-15 credit hours.

Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast, said the proposed tuition hike and change in the credit-hour plateau would generate about $1 million in increased revenue for the university.

He said the budget moves have the backing of Southeast's Budget Review Committee. The proposal has not yet been finalized by the university administration, but it is likely that such a proposal will be considered by the Board of Regents in April, university officials said.

Two members of the Board of Regents said late last week that they would like to rein in tuition hikes, but they don't know if that can be accomplished in these times of tight state finances.

"I would rather see the university try to stabilize their tuition without building in an increase every year," said Regent Mark Pelts of Kennett.

"At some point," he said, "we have got to quit balancing the budget on the backs of students."

Said Pelts: "I think it is embarrassing that when a parent calls me and says, `Mark, what will it cost to send my son or daughter to SEMO for four years?' I can't give them an answer."

Pelts said he has asked Ken Dobbins, vice president for finance and administration, to look into the possibility of "guaranteeing to a parent what their youngster's tuition rate would be" for four years of college.

The University of Missouri system is implementing a tuition hike over five years. Pelts said such a plan allows students and parents to better calculate their costs.

Pelts said incidental fees have continued to rise at Southeast and ultimately "it ought to get to a stabilizing point."

Regent Lynn Dempster of Sikeston said that the Board of Regents wants to hold down tuition costs.

She said the regents in closed-door meetings with the university administration have indicated they want to look at where cost-saving cuts can be made.

"Some of the programs have to be cut; some of the extras have to be cut," said Dempster, although she acknowledged that the university has done just that in recent years.

Dempster said that raising tuition would be "a last-ditch measure."

"We are desperately fighting laying any more costs on students than we have to," she maintained.

Over the past 10 years, tuition has gone up almost yearly, sometimes even from semester to semester. A full-time student taking from 12 to 16 hours paid $275 in semester incidental fees in the fall of 1982. As of this spring, the cost had climbed to $918 a semester.

As to the latest proposal to hike incidental fees, Wallhausen said, "It looks like we can balance the budget with this kind of tuition increase."

Southeast could receive state funding of about $30.5 million for general operations for the 1993 fiscal year, university officials have said.

While that would be an improvement over state funding for the current fiscal year, it would still be about a quarter-million dollars less than the amount of state funding Southeast received in the 1991 fiscal year, university officials have pointed out.

The proposed tuition hike would increase the cost per credit hour from $74 to $78 for in-state, undergraduate students at Southeast.

Coupled with the proposed change in the fee plateau, a full-time student taking 13-15 hours would pay more than $1,000 a semester next academic year, compared to the current $918 a semester. Those figures include a $30 recreation building fee, but do not include a $25 per semester student activities fee.

University President Kala Stroup said Friday that a hike of $4 a credit hour "is really a conservative estimate of what we need to balance the budget."

She said, "If we were to do what we need to do to continue (operations at) this institution, we would have had to raise tuition to at least $11 per credit hour."

Stroup said that without noticeable improvement in state funding, "you'll continually reduce and downsize the institution, and you will continually raise tuition. You have to do both of those things together."

Pelts said cost-saving moves have been made at the university. "We have been making some one-time cuts and not filling some positions.

"Some programs are feeling the pinch and we are not going to be able to be a full-service university without additional funding," said Pelts. "And maybe people don't want a full-service university.

"SEMO touches so many people's lives and provides so many services other than just having a student sitting in the classroom. If people don't want those services, we can get by cheaper," he said.

Pelts said the university administration and the regents don't want to lay off employees. "I think what our decision has been is to try and put off laying off people until it is the last resort.

"If this (funding) trend doesn't change in higher education, you are going to see people lose their jobs," he said.