Incoming UC President Warns of Fee Increases : Education: Peltason says costs could go up or enrollment could be limited to cover budget shortfall.

On the eve of his formal inauguration as UC president, Jack W. Peltason had an unhappy prediction for the system’s 166,000 students: Expect fee increases of at least $300 next year, and probably much more.

UC fees for the current school year were raised 24%, to $3,036, for in-state residents, excluding room and board. But that rise was not enough to cover the $224-million, 10.5% drop in state general revenues for UC that resulted from the state budget crisis, Peltason said Thursday.

At a Board of Regents meeting at UCLA, the new chief of the nine-campus system proposed increasing what he called a “bare-bones” operating budget for 1993-94 by 5.5%, or $104.5 million, for a total of $1.98 billion.

Without that increase in state general revenue funds, Peltason warned, enrollment may have to be limited and undergraduate fees raised by $450 or more next year. In addition, he suggested that sharply increased fees might be in store for professional and graduate students in such programs as law and medicine.

“While these actions would be unwelcome, they would allow us to maintain quality and thereby better serve the needs of students and the citizens of California,” said Peltason, who pledged increased financial aid to soften the blow of fee increases. He also stressed that a host of cost-cutting measures would be taken, including some unspecified but fundamental changes in the way UC operates and delivers education.

“It is a time to change the way we have done business,” said Peltason, who will be inaugurated this morning as the 16th president of UC in a ceremony at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Peltason, who had been chancellor of UC Irvine since 1984, succeeds David P. Gardner as system chief.

Peltason’s talk about fees is likely to further antagonize students planning to protest at UCLA today as a counterdemonstration to what they sarcastically call Peltason’s “crowning.” Student groups are angry over UC administrators’ pay and perquisites that they and other critics consider lavish.

In other business Thursday, the regents debated whether to proceed with environmental studies of two finalist sites in the San Joaquin Valley for a proposed 10th UC campus. A UC task force recently recommended that the studies, with an estimated cost totaling $1.5 million, be conducted for the so-called Academy site in Fresno County, 10 miles east of Clovis, and the Lake Yosemite site, six miles northeast of Merced. A third site, north of Fresno in Madera County, has been dropped.

However, several regents strongly argued against spending for expansion during a budget crisis, suggesting that San Joaquin Valley governments and businesses should donate the monies. “I think that we not put one more dime in this,” Regent Frank Clark said.

Representatives of the Fresno and Merced areas pleaded with the regents to go ahead with the studies and site selection even if a new campus is not built for 10 years or more. Some of those activists indicated that they would be willing to raise funds for the studies. The regents are expect to decide the matter next month.