Tuition surcharges could hit ASU next year if the Arizona Board of Regents decides to act on Tuesday’s recommendations with state university presidents.

ABOR’s Tuition Task Force, which includes university presidents and student representatives, met to explore the need for tuition increases and additional fees as a way to offset budget cuts for next year.

“Strategically, we are up against the wall,” Regent Ernest Calderon said. “We’ve got to prepare for a slower [economic] recovery. It’s not going to happen next year.”

In the first step toward revisiting tuition or imposing surcharges, members of the task force voted to recommend that ABOR temporarily remove restrictions to the tuition-setting process.

Among these restrictions is a requirement that the cost of higher education in Arizona remains at the top of the bottom one-third of all 50 states.

Calderon said all policies included in the recommendation were made by the board before catastrophic challenges to the university system emerged.

“The current financial challenges … cause me to not have as much fidelity to these policies as I normally would,” he said.

President Michael Crow said ASU needs a more reliable source of
revenue to make up for the difference in money the University has and the money it needs.

University-wide furloughs helped return more than $25 million to ASU, Crow said, but they will not be enough in the future.

“The furloughs are not something that we can maintain as we continue,” he said. “We need permanent resources.”

NAU President John Haeger agreed with Crow, saying furloughs, potential stimulus money and other one-time measures cannot sustain his institution.

“Without some revenue enhancement to the universities, I don’t believe we’ll be able to keep these universities intact,” he said. “[We] cannot cut our way out of this problem.”

David Martinez III, a student regent from UA, said he has often expressed his disapproval of policies that restrict the tuition-setting process, but now is not the time to allow tuition increases.

“I do think that I speak for the students when I say that we think it most appropriate at this time to stick to the top-of-the-bottom-one-third policy,” he said.

Martinez also opposed the idea of allowing tuition to change for the fall 2009 semester since the board already set tuition at its December meeting. Regents typically set tuition in December and Martinez said the board should stick to that schedule.

“There will have to be reasonable tuition increases,” he said. “[But] that table is set in December.”

State law requires a public hearing at least one week before the board meets to set tuition. Regents have until April 23 to organize the hearing if they decide to address tuition increases in their meeting on April 30.

No official actions or proposals were made at Tuesday’s meeting, but ABOR spokeswoman Andrea Smiley said it began a dialogue to address important questions.

“What are all the things that are happening around us, and what are the things that we will need to be thinking about?” she said.

The task force is expected to meet sometime next week to address the specific need for surcharges, fees or tuition increases at each university.

Crow said he will bring a list of options that ASU has along with possible consequences without a stronger source of revenue.

“The reductions that have been made by the state are permanent,” he said. “We have to adjust the institution in real time, right now.”

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