LA CROSSE, Wis.

As a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Carmen Wilson likes the idea of sharply raising tuition to hire more professors and recruit more poor and minority students.

But as the middle-class parent of a college student, she’s not so sure about the public university’s plan to increase tuition by $220 per semester to pay for the expansion.

“I ask myself, ‘Would I be willing to donate that much to the university for those causes?’” Wilson says. “It’s absolutely a private school way of looking at it.”

UW-La Crosse has unleashed a wave of debate over its plan to expand without a dime of new state money. The experiment, if approved by the governor and lawmakers next year, could be copied by schools around the country looking for a creative way to find revenue, university officials predict.

The debate here is not about whether diversity and quality are worthwhile goals for a university, but about the price that’s worth paying for them.

The plan calls for an increase in tuition of $1,320 on top of any annual statewide tuition hikes for inflation over three years. The increases would be grandfathered so they would only affect new students starting in fall 2008.

The extra money, eventually hitting $15 million a year, would pay for adding 1,000 students, more financial aid and scholarships for low-income students and 100 more professors. The goal would be for half of the new students to be minorities or low-income.

With a recent national report card failing 43 states on college affordability, and a national commission on higher education forcefully calling on colleges to control costs, some wonder whether UW-La Crosse’s new goals are worth the price.

Critics say the increase would hit middle-class families already struggling with tuition costs that have been raised to make up for state budget cuts. Tuition at the school this year is $5,555, up 57 percent from five years ago.