HARRISBURG -- Penn State University President Graham Spanier says he's trying to hold next year's tuition increase to 5.8 percent.

To do that, he told the House Appropriations Committee yesterday, he needs $17.6 million more in state aid than Penn State is getting this year. His request, if granted by the Legislature and Gov. Ed Rendell, would bring the total amount of state aid for next year to $334.8 million, a 5.6 percent increase.

Rendell has proposed $324 million in state aid for the 24-campus Penn State system, which has 81,000 students. Rendell's request is more than the $317 million Penn State is getting this year from the state, which makes up about 11 percent of the university's $2.8 billion budget.

Spanier noted that his request for 2005-06 -- $334.8 million -- is almost exactly what the university got four years ago, in 2001-02, before state aid dipped to as low as $306 million because of declines in state revenue and budget cuts to many agencies, including higher education.

Spanier said that in his 10 years at the helm at Penn State, "I have seen much moral support for the university from governors and legislators, but not as much financial support."

He said this is hard to figure because the state gets a lot of economic bang for its buck at Penn State. A recent study by Tripp Umbach consultants of Pittsburgh showed that Penn State "generates more than $6.1 billion in direct and indirect economic impact statewide."

The Legislature is expected to adopt a final 2005-06 budget by June 30. It will take effect July 1, and tuition bills will be sent to students and their parents by late July. If Penn State doesn't get its full request, Spanier said he'll look to cost-cutting, including lower-than-expected raises for personnel, but the tuition may have to rise a little more than 5.8 percent.

"We can't increase tuition much higher than 5.8 percent," he said in an interview after his nearly three-hour grilling by the committee. "We're at a critical tipping point on tuition," meaning college costs, already higher, will become unaffordable to many students if they keep rising. In-state tuition is about $10,000 a year now, with out-of-state tuition about double that, he said.

Spanier also asked state officials for a special $10 million appropriation for the Penn State College of Medicine at the Medical Center in Hershey in each of the coming three years.

This year, Penn State got only $4.8 million from the state for the medical college -- far less, Spanier said, that the national average of $50 million in state aid for medical schools.

The $4.8 million currently provided to Penn State's medical college "is the smallest appropriation of any public medical school in the country and is less than 10 percent of the national average," he said.