• UH-Hilo, $576 annually;

• UH-West O'ahu, $528;

• community colleges, $240.

By the time the increase ends in 2010-11, tuition for resident undergrads at Manoa would be $7,824 annually, compared with $3,504 next fall. At UH-Hilo, tuition would be $5,356 by 2010, compared with $2,472 next fall.

Public hearings are scheduled for February and March, and UH Board of Regents Vice-chairwoman Kitty Lagareta said before any action is taken, there will be "very thorough" discussions.

But some of the first reaction yesterday was negative.

"It's too high," said Ipo Melendez, 50, a senior at UH-Hilo who already struggles with the costs of raising children and paying tuition.

"Right now, we're at the lowest income in all the counties," she said. "We don't have the jobs like everybody else. We don't have the plantation to support us. We don't even have tourists. So we don't have the kind of income base to support our students."

"We're just trying to survive, paying what we have to now," said Kaleo Dudoit, 21, a UH-Hilo student who depends heavily on Pell grants and scholarships for the money to attend school. "But hopefully with a boost, it will boost our quality as well."

The UH administration has been at work for months on a tuition increase schedule to combat years of virtually flat state financing and increasing demand.

UH counts on tuition for part of the approximately $600 million it needs annually to operate, a figure that will grow to about $650 million by 2010.

Now the university takes home $98 million in tuition revenue a year. Under the proposed increases, that revenue would rise to around $196 million annually by 2010, according to Linda Johnsrud, interim associate vice president for planning and policy.

In an informational briefing to the board, Johnsrud said the proposed increases will be modified after the public hearings before returning to the regents for action in May or June.

Parent Theresa Wee, who chairs the new parent group "Friends of M Town" at UH-Manoa, worried that the size of the projected increases could keep students from less-affluent families from going to college.

"For most families, it will be a big jump," said Wee, who has two students attending UH-Manoa but paying much of their own way. "They're working and paying their own tuition, but that's going to make it a little more difficult for them."

While Interim UH President David McClain has been talking about the need for tuition increases since last summer, he has also emphasized that any increases will come with comparable increases in financial aid.

A state scholarship fund set up by the Legislature last year is expected to get a one-time infusion of $20 million this year. The university also plans to increase need-based aid from $4.8 million last year to $20.7 million by 2010.

McClain has often pointed out that UH'S tuition is among the lowest in the country. This year, tuition at land-grant universities nationwide has increased an average of 10 percent, according to UH statistics, while Manoa's tuition has gone up 3.3 percent.

The proposed tuition increase is a recognition on the part of the UH administration "of the need for students and families to bear a greater share of the cost than in the past," said Johnsrud. She called the increases "fair, reasonable and responsible."

Johnsrud noted that UH ranks 45th in comparison to other states in its current tuition levels. Vermont schools rank highest, at an average of $9,636, and Nevada the lowest, at $2,550.

Despite her reservations about the size of the increases, Wee said she saw some benefits, including encouraging attendance at less-expensive community colleges.

"For a lot of people. they might elect to go with community colleges, at least for the first two years. But that may not be a bad idea either, especially with the West O'ahu campus coming up."

Wee said that while her sons have wanted to shoulder the college load themselves, she and her husband may have to help in the future, particularly with costs for her younger son, Chris. And with increases also proposed for graduate schools, her sons may look beyond Hawai'i for what they want.

"It may make us look at other colleges," she said.

The proposed increases will fall most heavily on out-of-state students at the Manoa campus. They would see their tuition go from $9,984 next year to a projected $21,864 in 2010.

Manoa now has 6,114 out-of-state students, even though not all pay the full nonresident costs. As of 2003, 22 percent of students throughout the system were classified as out-of-state, but only 7.9 percent paid full out-of-state tuition. Both Hilo, with 1,248 nonresident students

(38 percent), and Kapi'olani Community College, with 824 nonresident students (11 percent), depend heavily on nonresident students to provide additional tuition revenues.