Cal State System Taking Steps to Cut Enrollment : Education: Thousands of classes and up to 1,000 instructors may be dropped because of tight state budgets, officials say.

A newly appointed committee of five campus presidents in the California State University system is working on a plan to “ratchet down” future Cal State enrollment to meet continually tight state budgets, a Cal State official said Monday.

The group, headed by Norma Rees, the new president at Cal State Hayward, has been asked to “manage future enrollments and at the same time keep diversity of enrollment” in the 20-campus system, Cal State lobbyist Scott Plotkin said.

The task is difficult because “ultimately we will be denying access to some students no matter how you cut it,” he added.

The group’s recommendations cannot be implemented until the 1992-93 academic year, Plotkin said, “and in the meantime, it’s going to be a real zoo out there as students fight to get classes they need.”

“If you’re not an experienced class crasher, you’re going to be in trouble next year,” he said. The committee was appointed by Ellis McCune, acting chancellor of the 369,000-student system.

Plotkin’s comments came during and after a news conference called by a new coalition of Cal State students, faculty members, support staff and administrators to protest Gov. Wilson’s proposed $402-million cut in the Cal State Board of Trustees’ $2-billion request for next year.

Pat Nichelson, president of the California Faculty Assn., said his organization estimates that the cuts will translate into more than 1,000 lost faculty positions and at least 11,700 classes that will not be offered.

“This university is in trouble,” Nichelson said, “and that’s bad for the state and bad for the people of California.”

Ken O’Brien, director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, later said that his staff has found that Cal State probably will lose about 600 faculty members, leading to a reduction of 4,000 classes, as a result of budget cuts and student fee increases.

About 20,000 students and prospective students either will be unable to take classes that they need to graduate or will not be admitted even if qualified, O’Brien said.

“There’s no doubt the state university is in trouble and it is the segment that is least able to deal with it,” O’Brien said, noting that Cal State depends almost entirely on state money, while the University of California receives two-thirds of its total budget from the federal government and other sources.

Asbury Jones, a 24-year-old senior at Cal State Sacramento and president of the Cal State Student Assn., said next year’s $156 fee increase will keep many low-income and minority students from attending Cal State.

James Lee, a press spokesman for Wilson, said the proposed cuts, while “regrettable,” are required by “the stark realities of the budget crisis,” referring to the estimated $12.6-billion deficit over the next 15 months.

“Some people are going to suffer but we’re trying to spread it out as best we can,” Lee said.