The Illinois Board of Higher Education approved a tuition guidelines policy for Illinois public colleges and universities by a narrow margin Tuesday.

NIU President John LaTourette said the policy passed 8 to 6, including an opposing student vote which did not count because students do not have authority to vote. As agreed by the Board of Regents last week, Regents representative Clara Fitzpatrick also voted against the policy.

The policy states that tuition rates “should approximate a one-third share of instructional costs in a university system, recognizing that short-term deviations from this proportion may be necessary.” The previous policy did not recognize any deviations in the proportion.

LaTourette said, “The board struggled with the issue.” The policy was debated for about an hour before it was passed. Much of the opposition to the policy came because of the wording of the one-third policy, he said.

The policy focused on the one-third cost covered by tuition and not on the problem of state funding. “The problem is really with the other two-thirds,” he said.

The board also discussed delaying the vote until the next IBHE meeting to allow the governing boards to further review the policy, but many of the governing boards will not meet until after the next IBHE meeting, LaTourette said.

He said that some of the people at the meeting argued in favor of tuition increases if increases meant that incomes for college graduates also would rise.

One of the objectives for the policy is to assure that at “whatever level they are set, tuition and fee charges do not bar access to public universities for those who cannot afford to pay such charges.”

However, tuition at Illinois public universities has climbed from low to moderate levels as a result of the lack of support for higher education by the state, LaTourette said.

At the IBHE meeting, University of Illinois President Stan Ikenberry said U of I has the 19th highest tuition in the nation.

The new guidelines policy also includes graduate and professional tuition rates for Illinois residents. Present graduate tuition rates are well below a one-third proportion, an IBHE chart shows.

While there was opposition to the tuition policy, there also was general support for the approval of a 1 percent increase in tuition waivers, LaTourette said. The increase allows state universities to provide more tuition waivers to minority students, including those who are admitted through the CHANCE program, he said. The increase will become effective in 1989, he added.