In a meeting with the Senate Advisory Committee for University Affairs yesterday, University Provost Phil Hanlon addressed faculty concerns about tuition and budget changes, the integration of out-of-classroom student experiences and University rankings.

Hanlon said though the University’s tuition rate has appeared to increase 5.1 percent annually over the last five years, because of reinvestments in need-based financial aid programs, the actual increase has been about 2.8 percent annually.

Hanlon added that with the tuition increases, need-based financial aid has also grown over the last six years.

“We absolutely want to keep (the University) as affordable as possible,” Hanlon said.

The University has been able to effectively strike a balance between adding programs and faculty and not straining the budget, especially compared to other institutions around the country, Hanlon said.

Looking toward the 2013-2017 budget, Hanlon said the University is already considering cost-cutting measures to meet the possible loss in state appropriations to the University.

These measures may include eliminating unnecessary services provided by the Information and Technology Services across campus and the possible restructuring of administration positions.

As the University looks toward the future, Hanlon said he feels it should also continue to work on its strengths and emphasize out-of-classroom learning.

Hanlon said students are enriching their education outside the classroom with the research, service and creative opportunities on campus.

But Hanlon noted that these campus assets are not currently integrated into the student learning experience and that research tools ought to be developed to assess their impact on student education.

“We need to become more rigorous and disciplined about defining learning outcomes and having tools to assess them,” he said.

These assessment tools would also increase the University’s prestige over that of private schools, which have smaller student-to-teacher ratios, Hanlon said.

“When we let education get defined by classroom teaching, we get creamed,” he said.

Hanlon added that he would like to see the University’s student-to-faculty ratio decrease to 10-to-1 from its current ratio of approximately 14.3-to-1. The ratio was initially about 15.1-to-1 prior to the planned addition of 150 new faculty members from 2007 through this year.

Addressing the National Research Council of the National Academy’s rankings of Ph.D. programs — set to be released Tuesday — Hanlon said he is interested to see the reaction to the numbers, adding that he is concerned that the public will misinterpret the numbers because they are based on interval scales rather than a set number ranking.

SACUA Chair and Prof. of Statistics Ed Rothman said as a statistician, he feels the interval rankings are unclear and measure what was done in the past rather than current educational strategies.

Hanlon also said he feels the quantification of University’s out-of-classroom experience would increase its ranking. Though he said the University is not concerned with its ranking, Hanlon added that the data will be a useful tool for the future.

— Katelyn Hummer contributed to this report.