Tuition and fee rates for the Fall 2010 to Spring 2011 academic year will be set at today’s Board of Trustees meeting.

President Bill Perry said the university now knows enough about next year’s state appropriation to set the rates for this fall’s incoming students.

The tuition rates will only affect incoming students, but fee changes will affect all students.

“When we do a tuition increase we have to look into a crystal ball for four years, (four and a half) for many of our students,” Perry said.

Rate changes are affected by the decline of state appropriated funding. A definitive budget has not been set, but figures that have been proposed by the governor and the legislature show a likely $3 million cut for fiscal year 2011.

“We’re going to be getting a little less than we as an institution got in 2006,” Perry said.

The majority of the university’s operating budget has come from university revenues, not state funding, since 2007.

The increase amount will be less than 10 percent, treasurer and director of business services Paul McCann said.

“It’s going to be a single-digit increase,” McCann said. “Every scenario that we’ve talked about is a single digit. None of the

tuition increases are going to make-up the difference from what we’re losing from Springfield.

We will have to do significant savings. We’re looking at trying to reduce operating expenses across the board.”

The law that formed and gave power to the Board of Trustees in 1996 grants the board the right to set fees and tuition based on reviews of the university’s financial needs.

The student senate has approved proposed increases to the campus improvement fee, which would fund deferred maintenance in the existing science buildings and construction of a new facility, and a 65-cent increase to support renovations in Lantz Arena.

The board will ultimately decide the increases’ fates.

Other business at the 1 p.m. meeting, which will be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union, includes tenure recommendations and election of officers.

The 2011 meeting schedule will also be set.

Sarah Ruholl can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected]