President Blaine Brownell was asking the board of trustees for more money.
In September, trustees Kimberly Hood Jacobs and Melanie Scott had voted against the $1,000 fee increase for freshmen and new students. Even without the increase, a year of tuition ate up about 80 percent of the average income of the poorest 20 percent of Hoosiers.
Now, Jacobs asked the trustees not to charge students $5,880 to live in residence halls.
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At this meeting, however, her dissent preceded a warning: increase these fees, and trustees may tempt legislators to punish universities with a tuition cap.
College affordability has become the state's No. 1 higher education problem, said Kent Weldon, the deputy commissioner for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.
One expert said a state-sponsored review could help. But neither the Commission nor Gov. Frank O'Bannon will demand such a review, though Indiana's universities increased tuition on average by 13 percent this school year, three percentage points higher than the national average, according to a study by the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Ball State's tuition increase this year reflected the state average, but the $1,000 tuition increase already condemned its recipients to a 23 percent increase next year.
"Most college officials will say in bad times, 'We need more,' and in good times, 'We need even more,'" said William Trombley, a senior editor who studied college affordability for the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "The governor or some legislative committee has to say, 'Let's stop the cycle.' There has to be some momentum in the state.
"There has to be somebody who lights the fire."
Once, Indiana's government did ask universities how they spent money, Weldon said. They hardly ever used the data, he said, and it cost about $1 million in staff time.
Also, while affordability is a concern statewide, it is not so much on an institutional basis, Weldon said. Indiana and Purdue universities maintain such a high selectivity that affordability is not a problem.
Still, Weldon knows that when it comes to affordability, Indiana has received a very low mark.
The Center for Public Policy and Higher Education publishes a higher-education report card every two years that critiques universities in five categories, including affordability.
In 2000, the state of Indiana received a C+ for its affordability; in 2002, the grade had dropped to a D+.
Hoosier families, after receiving financial aid, needed to invest 24 percent of their income to attend a four-year, public institution. The best states only required 18 percent.
But the biggest blow to the grade came from Indiana's community college system, Weldon said. Indiana's community colleges demand more tuition than most of its relatives in other states, he said.
According to the center's report, families dedicated 22 percent of their income to community colleges after financial aid.
Even though loans are available Trombley said they do not alleviate higher tuition because many first-generation college students, particularly minorities, do not take out loans.
"If you're not making much money, you're not willing to take out a lot of money to go to college," Trombley said.
And yet tuition continues to rise, along with legislators' ire.
During his campaign, Muncie Representative Tiny Adams chastised Ball State for its $1,000 tuition increase. He said the state would have to take measures to "get their (universities') attention," if they continued to spend money on buildings.
The measures didn't include more state intervention, Adams said.
Senator Larry Borst, R-Indianapolis, writes the two-year budget for the Senate, and he has publicly threatened tuition caps.
"Universities ought to commit to the real world," Borst said. "They couldn't care less about what people think. I just hope they don't price students out of college."
Trombley, however, said a tuition cap would not solve the problem significantly. The true issue is how universities spend money.
In 1998, professor Joe Losco, the chairman of Ball State's political science department, asked the commission to revive its reviews.
Losco had recently been selected as the president of Indiana's American Association of University Professors and was curious where the extra revenue from higher tuition had gone.
Losco said Stan Jones, the commissioner, was sympathetic to his plea, but not enough to take action.
"Stan said he thought it was a good idea and he would look into it, and that's about it," Losco said.
But Brian Fife, an associate professor of public affairs at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne, said the commission is not the only party responsible for scrutiny. Fife is calling for more citizen involvement.
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