Cal State Faces Slash ‘Almost Triple’ 1990’s : Education: Fullerton campus must trim at least $14 million, the university president says. Staffing, enrollment, materials and academic programs may be affected, along with football.

FULLERTON —  Even in the best scenario, Cal State Fullerton must trim $14 million from its budget, raising the specter of deep cuts that could affect staffing, enrollment, materials and perhaps even academic programs in the coming school year, the university’s president said Saturday.

“That’s almost triple the amount we had to cut last year,” President Milton A. Gordon said. “That’s a staggering amount of money.”

No immediate decisions have been made about where the ax will fall, but Gordon said each division of the university is taking a hard look at its operations, a process likely to continue for several months.

He emphasized that every effort will be made to avoid layoffs and cuts that could hurt educational programs.

“We’ve tried thus far to protect the quality of academic programs,” Gordon said. “But I’m very worried as we look at these figures. To go from a $4.7-million deficit to a projected deficit of $14 million in one year--that’s a change of several magnitudes. . . . It’s going to be a strain on our ingenuity.”

One of the first casualties of the crisis may be the Division 1-A Titan football team, which has one of the worst fan attendance records in the Big West Conference and has operated on a shoestring budget for years.

Campus athletic council advisers, charged with cutting $500,000 from the entire athletic department budget for next fall, have recommended that the president scrap the $1.3-million-a-year football program. Gordon said he will not decide its fate for another week or so, pending consultations with university supporters and civic leaders.

To stay alive, Gordon said, the program would need to raise at least $650,000 in private funds. In recent years, the university has not been able to generate enough donations to stem an annual athletic department deficit, which hit $380,000 in June.

“There isn’t anywhere else the money could come from,” he said. “We’re going to be reviewing all university programs. The budget is really disastrous.”

Student and faculty representatives called the proposed budget devastating. And students are expected to balk at a proposed 20% increase in fees, especially after they were hit this year with a 10% increase.

“I’m not going to oppose it,” student body president Joseph Ahn, 23, said about fee increases that would bring student costs to $800 to $900 a year. “But I think the general campus population is going to be against it because of the last retroactive fees the governor tacked on us.”

Cal State Fullerton’s projected deficit of $14 million is based on Gov. Pete Wilson’s austere state budget, released earlier this month, which provides about $2.1 billion for the 20-campus California State University system. Wilson’s budget assumes a $7-billion shortfall in state revenue.

However, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst said last week that the gap between state revenue and spending may widen to nearly $10 billion.

Cal State Fullerton had to slice $4.7 million out of its $119-million budget for the current academic year. As part of the resulting cuts, the university has not filled 23 positions among the 900 full-time faculty members. Fullerton has another 600 to 700 part-time faculty members, many of whom would be at greatest risk of layoff, a faculty spokesman said.

At the same time, enrollment has grown to 25,700 students, a slight increase that exceeded projections for the 1990-91 school year.

No enrollment increases will be possible next year, Gordon said.

Among the choices for trimming costs in the coming year, faculty and staff layoffs and cuts in classes are “the last options I would consider,” Gordon said.

Barry A. Pasternak, president of the campus chapter of the California Faculty Assn., said the projected shortfall is far worse than the faculty had imagined.

“It’s clear there isn’t going to be any one magic bullet here,” said Pasternak, a business management professor. “The bind we’re in is that at least 80% to 85% of the expenses in running the university are for personnel.”

Other cuts could spell elimination of low-enrollment majors and academic programs, reductions in classes and increased class sizes, Pasternak said.

“I think there’s a possibility we will be seeing severe impacts in certain disciplines,” he said.

As if the proposed cuts are not bad enough, Gordon said the university recently learned it would have to return $543,000 of the $2 million in lottery money it received for the 1990-91 school year. State lottery money this fiscal year came in about $10 million less than the projected $60 million.

The president said early rumors about such a shortfall led him to freeze more than $330,000 in lottery money intended for such programs as the campus’ distinguished lecturer series, research projects and equipment.

He said he is confident that the university can return the money without midyear cuts.

Just as private donations are the key to survival for the football program, the university as a whole is going to have to “rely on private support more than ever,” Gordon said.