After a weekend of contentious debate, the Arizona Students’ Association submitted a tuition proposal to the Arizona Board of Regents, recommending a 3 percent increase for all returning undergraduates at ASU, NAU and UA.

The student advocacy organization, composed of representatives from each state university campus in Arizona, focused the proposal on maintaining affordable, accountable and predictable tuition policies for Arizona students.

“No benchmarks or mandates exist to measure how increases in tuition and fees are enhancing the quality of education at Arizona’s public institutions,” according to the ASA proposal. “Catchphrases and mission statements saying money is being spent for student services is not enough; students deserve to know that an increase in tuition is directly enhancing their educational experience.”

Michael Slugocki, ASA board chairman, said past increases have been significant, unpredictable and largely unjustified.

“We want to have a better idea of where our money is going,” said Slugocki, a UA political science senior. “We have these enormous tuition costs, but right now, nobody knows what that money is being spent on.”

The proposal requests that ABOR “ensure that tuition funds flow toward student-determined priorities.”

To do this, ASA recommends that university presidents be required to specifically and publicly report how their school uses revenue from student tuition.

“We want to know where tuition dollars are being spent. We want a breakdown of that money,” Slugocki said. “Sometimes tuition dollars are being spent on buildings or utilities. … Students should not be paying [to construct] new buildings; those are state buildings.”

Tuition money should instead be spent on “student-determined priorities” such as advising, class availability and technology, Slugocki said.

ASA Executive Director Serena Unrein said the proposal addresses students’ concerns that tuition increases but quality of education does not.

“There are inherent contradictions in the system,” she said. “We have no money, but we build nice fountains and we buy nice chairs … but our education isn’t getting any better.”

The 3 percent tuition-increase proposal falls just short of ASU President Michael Crow’s 5 percent increase, announced Thursday.

Slugocki said the ASA proposal is based on cost of living and median family income increases in Arizona, while Crow’s proposal is less substantiated.

“Why is it 5 percent? This number seems like it’s pulled out of thin air,” Slugocki said.

Mark Appleton, president of the Tempe campus’ Undergraduate Student Government, said Crow is pushing hard to make sure his proposal passes.

NAU President John Haeger recommended a 6.5 percent increase for in-state students who are not enrolled in the university’s guaranteed-tuition program and a $400 increase for out-of-state students.

UA President Robert Shelton recommended a 12.5 percent increase for in-state undergraduates and a 14 percent increase for out-of-state undergraduates.

Slugocki said the ASA proposal would be presented to ABOR as an alternative to each university president’s proposal. He said the ASA plan represents students and fights for accountability guidelines that the presidents’ proposals do not.

The tuition predictability measure of the ASA proposal sparked a long debate among board members in a five-hour meeting Friday in the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus. Some members disagreed with the measure because ASU and NAU already have predictable-tuition policies, but UA does not.

Several members of the ASA board said they felt the predictability measure weakened the overall argument by taking focus away from accountability.

Andrew Clark, a board member from ASU West, opposed the predictability measure because he felt it removed focus from the proposal.

“We’re taking this shotgun approach to several issues at once,” Clark said in the meeting Friday.

Unrein said in the meeting that predictable increases in tuition mean nothing if students cannot afford them.

The final proposal asks that ABOR limit tuition increases for continuing students at UA while maintaining such measures at ASU and NAU.

Slugocki said he thinks ABOR will be very receptive to the accountability measures of the proposal.

“It’s a new angle for us that says, ‘We really care about accountability,’” he said.

Reach the reporter at adam.sneed@asu.edu.