Titled “Pulling the Plug on Michigan’s Future,” the reported was conducted by the MLHS, which is a nonprofit advocacy group for low-income residents.

“As the state cuts support to public universities, guess what happens?” MLHS spokeswoman Judy Putnam said. “Tuition goes up and that’s pushing (college) out of reach, making people go deeper into debt or take on more work hours, if they can find it, to get that degree. This is a time when we need to make it easier, not harder, for people to earn their college degree.”

Michigan’s legislators have yet to pass the higher education budget for coming fiscal year. In March, the Senate approved a 3.1 percent decrease. The House’s version of the budget, passed in June, called for funds to remain stagnant in the next year. MSU has received $291.8 million in year-to-date appropriations, according to analyses by the nonpartisan Senate and House fiscal agencies.

Differences between the bills have to be reconciled and passed in a final budget by Oct. 1.

Since 2002, funding from the state to public colleges and universities fell 15 percent, the MLHS report found.

Partially to compensate for the anticipated falling appropriations from the state, MSU increased tuition by 2.5 percent for the 2010-11 school year, an increase of about $273 for a freshman taking 15 credits.

To combat skyrocketing tuition, the MLHS report suggests better implementing the “Lt. Governor’s Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth,” better known as the Cherry Commission. Chaired by Lt. Governor John Cherry, the 40-member commission worked to explore methods to increase the state’s commitment to education, and released its recommendations in 2004.

The commission offered many good suggestions, but they have not been widely instated, said Sharif Shakrani, a senior scholar at the MSU Education Policy Center.

“The Cherry Commission basically stated that there is a need to increase the proportion of adults in Michigan that have a college degree,” Shakrani said. “The Cherry Commission, which is now more than eight years old, has not really been implemented very well because of the economic situation in Michigan.”

In lieu of solutions from the state, MSU has worked to keep tuition as low as possible while still maintaining quality, said Steve Webster, MSU’s vice president for governmental affairs. Additionally, MSU’s Board of Trustees approved a 13 percent increase in student financial aid for the coming school year, with an extra 10 percent atop that amount expected for the 2011-12 school year.

“Ensuring access (through financial aid programs), reducing costs and protecting and improving academic quality are the ways we have worked now annually over the past 10 years to mitigate what has become annual state budget cuts,” Webster said. “We can control those three things more than we can control the state’s economy.”