SPRINGFIELD — University of Illinois trustees unanimously voted for a 6.9 percent tuition increase — equal to 2.7 percent over each of four years — despite a student trustee’s noting that the school could be outpricing its own students.

The UI figure was targeted to the inflationary rate of the Higher Education Price Index.

But Urbana campus student trustee Dan Soso said students still felt pain.

"The simple fact is that the 6.9 percent increase in front of us is by no standard an inflationary hike. It is simply what it is, a 6.9 percent increase in tuition," Soso told his fellow trustees.

"The 9.5 percent increase last year was to represent four years’ worth of inflation, and the incoming freshman class in fall 2011 will still have three of those inflationary years accounted for on top of what we increase tuition by today."

Soso noted that an Urbana education could now cost $100,000 over four years.

He asked the trustees "whether they could have afforded to attend UI today at its $100,000-plus sticker price. Would working minimum wage through college even have put a dent in the costs?"

Trustees chairman Chris Kennedy said he was concerned about the "ravishing effect" of college costs, and stressed that financial aid needed to be increased as well to prevent middle-class students from being priced out of what was once considered to be a bargain education.

President Michael Hogan reiterated that greater supplementary aid was coming from the university itself.

He said an inflationary rise in tuition did not cover many costs that have risen beyond that rate, and that the university was having trouble holding on to top faculty who have gone without raises even after the university has made cuts.

Hogan added that the UI has been up keeping up with Monetary Award Program grants, even as the state stays about half a billion dollars behind in support it owes the UI, about a tenth of that MAP money.

The UI’s position is that an annualized 2.7 percent is below national trends in recent years.

According to the most recent survey by the College Board, tuition and fee increases at four-year public universities averaged 7.9 percent for the 2010-11 academic year.

University of Illinois base tuition for in-state resident students will increase $718 per year to $11,104 at the Urbana-Champaign campus; $630 per year to $9,764 at the Chicago campus; and $562 to $8,670 at the Springfield campus.

Outgoing student body President David Olsen praised the trustees for holding one fee to 0 percent, after students investigated and made their case on the library/information technology fund.