WAHPETON - North Dakota's Board of Higher Education is supporting a 5 percent limit on college tuition increases this fall and a $200 increase in grants for poorer students, while promising more scrutiny of rising fees.

Course and program fees are so pervasive that a listing of them alongside a student's tuition charges is "starting to resemble a cell phone bill," said Nick Rogers, the board's student representative.

"It just masks the true costs of education. … I don't know that there are any programs left that don't have a programmatic fee on top of the tuition," Rogers said.

During a board meeting at the North Dakota State College of Science on Thursday, board members backed the tuition limit while supporting requests for increased fees from the College of Science and the University of North Dakota.

At Science, the fee for students in the two-year school's agriculture program will rise from $200 to $300 annually. The fee for students in UND's College of Business and Public Administration is increasing from $100 to $150 per semester.

Board member Bruce Christianson asked that the increased fees be voted on separately - the board endorsed them, 7-1 - and asked that the board set aside time during its regular June meeting to discuss student fees. His request was granted.

Caps on tuition increases are less valuable if schools may raise student fees to make up for it, Christianson said.

"We cap that off, and just go around (the tuition limit) by adjusting the fee. That's OK? It's not OK with me," he said. "What can be the other alternatives? I think we need to stop, draw the line and figure out what that might be."

The 5 percent tuition limit is included in the North Dakota university system's budget bill, which the Legislature endorsed last month.

It gives colleges the option of requesting tuition increases higher than 5 percent, but a larger rise would require approval of the board and the Legislature's Budget Section, which is an interim committee of lawmakers.

Laura Glatt, the university system's vice chancellor for administrative affairs, said none of the university system's 11 public colleges have signaled any intention to ask for a tuition increase of more than 5 percent for the next year.

College administrators are still calculating the fall's tuition charges, and they have the leeway to raise them up to 5 percent, she said.

In the next academic year, North Dakota's college grant program will increase grants for the university system's neediest students from $600 to $800, the first rise in 17 years.

The Legislature added almost $2.2 million more to the grant program over two years, increasing the sum for grants to $6.26 million. It is enough money to provide grants to more than 3,900 students for each of the next two years.