The Board of Trustees is hoping to set tuition rates, along with room and board, at its next meeting to help allow families more planning time.

Board chairman Christopher Kennedy agreed with University President Michael Hogan Friday at the meeting that setting tuition rates earlier in the year is a priority because it will help attract out-of-state and international students.

One example mentioned was a competitive school, such as other Big Ten institutions, set rates earlier in the year, and thus they are able to hand out financial aid to students in need. Therefore, these students accept the guaranteed aid as opposed to wait for the University to determine its financial aid.

This is because the University’s supplemental aid is tied directly to increases in tuition rates since the pool of money is mainly comprised of that revenue.

The tuition rate for the next incoming class has usually been determined at the spring Board of Trustees meeting, as it was last year. But tuition rates for the class of 2014 were determined in May 2010 and has been set as late as June in some years, said Tom Hardy, University spokesman.

“There is nothing more we can do help recruit diverse students right now,” said Kennedy, who was also in favor of an enrollment management program, calling it a “clear advantage to students.”

Hogan said the University isn’t competitive enough in its financial need. He noted that at the University only 15 % of the tuition revenue is used for financial aid. But at other peer institutions that number is closer to 17 %.

For fiscal year 2012, the University handed out $53.8 million in financial aid to students who qualify for the aid, who are in-state undergraduates.

In addition, Avijit Ghosh, who works as an assistant to Hogan, said during his report on dashboard indicators that the Urbana campus leads its peers in freshman four-year graduation rates and the graduation rates from underrepresented groups. These dashboards are a display of key metrics to summarize the performance of the University and help identify strategic priorities.

The Urbana campus was compared to nine peer institutions, most notably University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and University of Wisconsin at Madison. Trustees expressed a need for a more through conversation about these indicators, possibly at their January meeting in Chicago.