Guaranteed tuition is looking better every day.

At least that's one way — if you are a current NAU freshmen — to look at the recent round of proposed tuition surcharges.

NAU has proposed a $350 annual surcharge per student and up to $144 a year in technology fees to help fund what is likely to be a sizable budget gap.

But to its credit, NAU is making good on its promise to all freshmen who entered last fall not to raise their tuition if they graduate in four years.

In other words, no new surcharges will apply, although apparently everyone will get charged higher technology fees if they are approved by the regents.

The package of higher charges would help raise $4.7 million for NAU, and they come on top of already-approved tuition increases ranging from 9 percent for continuing students to 14 percent for incoming freshmen. The latter will qualify for guaranteed tuition, but apparently not before the surcharge, if approved, is applied.

Given the likely severity of the budget cuts by the Legislature and the fact that NAU has already eliminated about 150 positions, we suppose that an extra $500 a year isn't uncalled for.

But it does raise questions about not only affordability in a recession but whether NAU still complies with the state constitutional requirement to provide an education that is "as nearly free as possible." With the surcharges, total tuition and fees for all NAU students would be more than $6,000 a year starting in the fall, a figure that reportedly is no longer in the bottom third of all U.S. public universities.

There are other ways to balance the university's budget, of course, than by raising tuition. But so far, the Legislature has not seen fit to protect higher education from major cuts, much less keep spending levels on pace with rapid enrollment growth. NAU enrollment has grown by 11 percent in the past two years, but instead of a $16 million increase in state funds to match that growth, it received a $20 million cut this year.

Granted, federal stimulus aid might come along and help to backfill some of the budget holes. But because that money is one-time or, at most, available for only several years, it will likely be used to avoid staff furloughs or other temporary measures.

There is, however, no getting around the fact that NAU's tuition has doubled in less than a decade while family income has risen at less than half that pace. The amount set aside from tuition hikes for financial aid has been increased from 9 percent 14 percent, but the average debt of an NAU graduating senior still hovers around $20,000, according to recent surveys.

In flush times, that level of debt might sound manageable even to fledgling school teachers and other new graduates entering lower-paid professions. But this year, the job market is extremely tight, and NAU may find that underclassmen and even prospective freshmen simply aren't willing to shoulder ever-higher expenses with the prospects for paying back loans so uncertain.

Further, as a largely residential campus, NAU has always been more expensive for students from the Valley to attend (rather than going to ASU and living at home). Parents who are worried about family finances may see new and higher fees as the straw that breaks their resolve to make the sacrifice it takes to send a child away to the Mountain Campus.

We truly hope we are wrong about fall enrollment — it has taken the Mountain Campus more than a decade to nearly regain the record high numbers of students who came to Flagstaff in the mid-1990s, and the recent growth has been encouraging. But if university officials want to send a signal to wavering Fall 2009 enrollees that they are price sensitive in a recession, they should consider further reductions in the surcharge. The regents will have the final say next month, but NAU can take the sting out of that decision — and by comparison look better than ASU and UofA — by coming down an extra hundred dollars as a show of good faith.