The board will vote to approve the tuition increase at its meeting Friday.

For in-state undergraduates, the 7 percent increase would equal about $18-$22 per credit hour, based on 2007-08 per credit hour tuition figures. Out-of-state undergraduates would pay about $50-$54 per credit hour.

In-state graduate students would see an increase of about $27 per credit hour, while out-of-state grad students would be about $56 per credit hour.

The drop in tuition increase is partially due to an increase in state appropriations for higher education.

Currently, state legislature is proposing a 3 percent increase in state appropriations to universities, said Steve Webster, MSU’s vice president for governmental affairs. That is slightly more than last year’s appropriations increase of 0.1 percent, or a little more than $2 billion — about $350 million of which went to MSU — according to the Grapevine project, an annual compilation of data on state support for higher education put together by faculty at Illinois State University.

Michigan ranked 49th in higher education appropriations last year, and only Rhode Island ranked lower, which decreased its appropriations 1.2 percent.

The final state appropriations won’t be known until the weekend of July 4, Webster said.

“There’s a lot of major costs we need to absorb to keep a standard of excellence at MSU,” said Trustee Melanie Foster. “We’re in a state where they’re funding prisons and not higher education. We can’t depend on the state.”

She said the state has been lowering appropriations to the university for 20 years.

“If you look historically over the past 20 years, (state appropriations) used to cover about 60 percent of the cost of a student’s education,” Foster said. “Now it’s about 40 percent. They haven’t kept up.”

Tom Lenard, communications director for the Michigan Democratic Senate Caucus, said higher education is an area they have focused on this year.

“We tried to have a slight increase this year, but the budget came in $400 million below what was expected,” Lenard said. “As far as our caucus is concerned, higher education is a priority. It helps create a skilled workforce and create jobs.”

Tenisha Howard, a first-year doctoral student in African American and African studies, said this could affect students who are already hurting.

“They need to have more funding opportunities available for undergraduate and graduate students, because it’s really a struggle for students having to work two or three jobs just to try to get book money,” Howard said.

Kinesiology senior Matthew Haughey said he doesn’t see the reason for increasing tuition.

“It affects everybody; students don’t have very much money to begin with,” Haughey said. “I guess it means we’ll have to take out more loans.”

Perles said he can understand the students’ gripe.

“We certainly have compassion for all the students who have to take out loans to pay for school and end up 30, 40, $50,000 in debt when they graduate. That’s a terrible way to start a career,” Perles said.

Neither the University of Michigan nor Wayne State University, the state’s two other research universities, have finalized their budgets. Saginaw Valley State University Board of Control members approved a 3.74 percent tuition increase Monday.

ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, has been working with the trustees and petitioning lawmakers to help lower the cost of tuition.

Christopher Kulesza, ASMSU Academic Assembly chairperson, said though talks with the trustees have gone well, the legislature hasn’t been a big help.

“Pretty much, when it comes down to it, we went to the (Michigan House of Representatives): We don’t have an answer; we went to the Senate: There’s no answer; we went to the governor’s office: There’s no answer,” Kulesza said.

ASMSU will approach the board to suggest partnering together to lobby state lawmakers to afford the university more money.

“For me it’s like I’m beating my head against a wall,” Perles said. “My No. 1 thing is tuition and I’m not doing a very good job of it.”