If the Board of Trustees approves a four-year plan for SIU tuition, fees and housing at today’s board meeting, 1997s incoming freshman can expect to know the costs for all four years of their education before enrolling.

The four-year plan is SIU’s response to a statewide recommendation made by the Illinois Board of Higher Education Committee To Study Affordability that Illinois public universities establish four-year tuition plans.

The four-year plan, covering fiscal years 1997 through 2000, would annually increase undergraduate and graduate SIUC tuition rates by $5 a credit hour per semester.

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According to the plan, fee and housing rates would mirror the projected annual inflation rate of 3.5 percent.

According to the Board of Trustees, the proposal’s purpose is to provide students and their families with the opportunity to plan for the costs of a four-year education.

Ted Sanders, the new SIU chancellor, said he supports the four-year tuition plan and said the fee increases are reasonable and necessary.

Undergraduates would never see more than a $100 increase in a year, Sanders said.

However, Student Trustee Jason Ervin said he is concerned that the increases may be too high.

What we are looking at is a 23 percent increase spread out over the next four years, he said. An increase of five dollars per credit hour per year is really quite a lot of money.

The percentage increase for the four years would be 6.2 percent in 1997, 5.9 percent in 1998, 5.6 percent in 1999, and 5.3 percent in 2000.

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Also on the Board of Trustees’ agenda is a revision to the refund policy for SIU students who withdraw from classes.

If passed, the revision would reduce the amount of time SIU students have to withdraw from classes and receive a full tuition and general student fees refund.

Students withdrawing from an eight or 16-week course will only have until the last day of the second week of classes to withdraw with a full refund, instead of the last day of the third week, which has been the previous deadline.

However, students would receive a pro-rated refund proportionate to the amount of time the class was in session if they withdraw after the two-week deadline.

Under the proposed revision, a student could withdraw from a class after being enrolled for up to 60 percent of the class session.

The current deadline to withdraw is the end of the eighth week, or halfway through the semester.

A 3.3 percent average salary increase to faculty, administrative and professional staff, and civil service will also be voted on.

Sanders said the 3.3 percent increase was approved by the governor, is close to the impact of inflation on costs and will help to keep salaries level with inflation.

If passed, the increase would take place retroactively from July 1, 1995.

Another four-year plan, this one for SIUC parking lot improvements and expansion, also will be voted on today.

If passed, the money generated from an increase in the price of SIUC parking stickers, an increase in SIUC parking meter prices, and increase in amounts paid for parking fines will generate 55 percent of the estimated expansion and improvement cost of $2,131,500.

Parking sticker fees would be increased from $10 to $30 for student decals, from $20 to $40 for faculty and staff who make less than $20,000 a year and from $30 to $60 for faculty and staff who make more than $20,000.

Metered parking prices would increase from 25 cents an hour to 50 cents an hour, and fines for violating metered parking regulations would be $4 instead of $2.

Ervin expressed concerns over the increased costs to students who drive to class, but pointed out that increasing the costs of parking may help ridership for the new mass transit program.