The UNA Board of Trustees approved a proposed 5.72 percent increase in tuition and fees at their June 10 meeting.

The $11 per credit hour increase will bring undergraduate course costs to $233 per credit hour, while graduate courses will cost $276 per credit hour.

“This is the most important decision we make each year, but it’s also the hardest, because we make this decision in June and don’t officially approve the budget until September,” said Trustee Marty Abroms.

The board voted to approve the $11 increase, as opposed to a $14 increase presented by President William Cale. The second proposal called for an approximate 6.1 percent in tuition and fees, but would defer the increase in the athletic fee to tuition for the 2013-2014 school year.

The increased tuition in Cale’s proposal would allow for a cost-of-living raise for faculty and staff members at the university, Cale said. He said it has been several years since a cost-of-living raise was awarded and current salaries might no longer be sufficient to keep up with the rising costs of day-to-day life.

“It’s always an interesting and challenging task to find the balance between meeting the needs of the university and watching how many dollars students pay for an education,” Cale said.

The earliest the university could join the ranks as a Division-I school, pending a conference invitation, is June of 2015, Cale said.

“I don’t understand why we can’t defer the athletic fee,” Cale said. “We’ve been pouring money into athletics and this move to D-I.”

Board members also expressed their concerns with deferring the increase in the athletic fee for the school year.

“I don’t want to see us put in a bad position for the future of D-I by decreasing the athletic fee now,” said Trustee Libby Jordan.

Others said they were more concerned with keeping tuition costs low for students.

“I’m not saying we need to be the cheapest place on the block, but we need to be affordable,” Abroms said.

Trustee Joel Anderson said university officials need to re-examine their current budget to find places to pull money for a cost-of-living raise.

“The board has to do something to limit these increases,” Anderson said. “It’s got to stop. I’m all for paying our staff fairly, but we have to level these tuition increases.”

Instead of being critical of the key players involved in deciding on the tuition increase, Anderson said he is critical of the process by which tuition is raised.

“Is there some way we can adopt a new program of drafting an initial budget in June and voting on the increases in September or October?” Anderson said. “There’s too much guessing going on here.”

The approved 5.72 percent increase also brings a $2 increase for the transportation fee, a $1 increase in the facilities fee, a $15 increase in the student health fee and a $25 increase per semester in the university’s Dining Dollars program.

During the board meeting, members also elected to approve a $100 course fee for each course taken by students in the university’s Early College Program. The fee will go into effect during the summer 2014 term.

The UNA Board of Trustees will approve the university budget at their September meeting.