MSU President M. Peter McPherson will offer ideas about how to help students graduate sooner and to raise MSU's academic standards at his State of the University address today.

McPherson's speech, "New Opportunities for New Realities," begins at 3 p.m. today in Wharton Center's Pasant Theatre.

"We need a discussion on campus to build on a number of ideas and probably others that I will suggest that look at the quality of our educational-experience situation," McPherson said, adding that the "new realities" part of his speech will be about working through the budget shortages in the university. "The resources are very different, but it seems to me that, even in this environment, you have to keep pushing."

The address usually is given in the fall, but McPherson was in Iraq, serving as financial coordinator for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The basis of the address, university spokesman Terry Denbow said, is to "look at some new ways to play upon the strengths of (MSU's) guiding principles."

The six guiding principles of MSU were introduced by McPherson in 1994, and established the values with which MSU officials are supposed to conduct business. They include topics such as educational excellence, academic freedom, creativity, fairness and respect.

"When we put those in place, we had a number of specific things we wanted to achieve, most of those we've been able to get done," McPherson said.

Today's speech will advance those principles and will let the audience know the progress the university has made in the decade since they were introduced, Denbow said.

One of the ideas McPherson plans to "put out for consideration" is how to shorten the time it takes undergraduates, on average, to get their degree.

McPherson said the average student takes 4.5 years to graduate.

"There are a number of ways we might think about doing this," he said. "For example, we could move to a block tuition, where students will pay for the classes they take. You could have a price that encourages people to take a full load."

He added that another option is to charge a higher tuition for a student to take a fifth year.

McPherson said another one of the ideas he plans to introduce is the possibility of raising academic standards for entering students - as well as current students.

"There is some anecdotal evidence that perhaps we should have some higher expectations for academic performance," he said. "Our students, many of them, are very high achievers who absolutely do a good job.

"But we should have a somewhat higher general expectation of learning."

Provost Lou Anna Simon declined to comment Monday night.

Amy Bartner can be reached at bartnera@msu.edu.