The University of Southern Mississippi is preparing to seek an 11-percent tuition increase at this week&8217;s College Board meeting. Before passing along a bigger financial burden to would-be college students, we hope the College Board seeks alternatives.

As he seeks the increase, USM president Shelby Thames will point to a combination of being under funded by the Legislature along with the millions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Katrina as reasons to justify the increase.

Part of Thames&8217; goal is to make up a shortfall between a 5-percent pay raise the Legislature approved earlier this year and what Thames says is only enough extra funding to cover 3.75 percent of the raises.

We agree that the Legislature should always put its money where its mouth is. But the Legislature has lots of history with this including the much-ballyhooed Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which has only been fully funded once since its inception in 1997.

One thing that has baffled us for years about our state&8217;s higher education system is the continuing problem of redundant curriculum.

Mississippi has eight public institutes of higher learning, yet a number of them continue to offer overlapping programs.

In a state the size of Mississippi with all of the challenges facing our students and our taxpayers, simplifying the programs to eliminate redundancy is long overdue. And the state should accomplish that before it raises tuition even a penny.