A week after announcing his proposal to raise tuition, interim President Lou Hencken said Wednesday he supports a new financial aid plan that could compensate students for the additional tuition costs.

During Hencken’s State of the University address on April 9, he announced he will ask Eastern’s Board of Trustees for a 3.5 percent tuition increase that would generate “approximately $1.3 million.”

The proposed increase would cost full-time undergraduates an extra $52 for tuition and fees during one semester. A semester’s cost would be bumped up from $2,263.25 to $2,315.30.

In order to help students pay for the increase, Hencken said he supports a financial aid plan the University of Illinois in Urbana has been using for two years, and it “apparently works for them very effectively.”

The U of I took on the plan two years ago after raising its tuition.

Next year, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, Eastern’s current provider of financial aid, will only cover 15 semester hours of students’ tuition, Hencken said, so the U of I’s financial aid plan would be a good way to provide additional aid to students who would not be able to attend Eastern because of the tuition increase.

“Many students are already working two jobs just to pay for college,” he said, “and those students may have a hard time compensating for the increase.”

If the financial aid office institutes the plan, they would be looking at students in those situations, and aid would be distributed “based entirely on financial need.”

Although “very uncertain,” Hencken said he hopes the plan would get Eastern an extra $75,000 in tuition funding that “can be spread out” for student use.

The state could give Eastern $100,000 or maybe $50,000, Hencken said.

“It is just uncertain right now, so I don’t want to get too specific. We are still in the developing stages.”

Hencken said the aid would be “just a supplement, not a cure all.”

Admissions is currently looking into the the U of I’s plan, Hencken said, because “we want to get the policies and procedures that the U of I uses.

“We do not want to reinvent the wheel,” he said.

Hencken said he expects to present his tuition-increase proposal to the BOT at its April 29 meeting.

“I want to do this while students are still here,” he said.