College Cutbacks Harm Economy, Leaders Say : Funding: Report warns against erosion of the state’s commitment to public and private education.

Showing unprecedented unity, leaders of California’s public and private higher education systems warned Tuesday that the state must restore its historic commitment to funding colleges and universities or face economic catastrophe.

Continuing cutbacks on campuses trap the state in its deep recession and jeopardize the future of many thousands of young people, the educators said. “Simply stated, by allowing the slow erosion of higher education, California’s economic future is being placed in serious jeopardy,” they said in their report, “The Golden State at Risk.”

The report was presented at an unusual joint news conference attended by the top executives of the University of California, California State University, the community college system, the Assn. of Independent California Colleges and Universities and the California Postsecondary Education Commission. The leaders hinted at possible solutions, such as a ballot measure to grant UC and Cal State constitutional guarantees of funding or new taxes devoted to education. But they resisted giving public support to any plan.

“It would just be premature for the institutions of higher education to get in the middle of a big political battle,” UC President Jack W. Peltason said.

Their statements came just a few days after the UC and Cal State systems sharply increased students’ fees in reaction to expected cuts in state general revenues for 1993-94. UC, Cal State and community colleges face another year of staff layoffs and enrollment reductions. Private colleges are afraid of cuts in the state-funded scholarships known as Cal Grants.

The report’s title purposefully echoes “A Nation at Risk,” the influential 1983 study that urged reforms in elementary and high school education to keep the United States economically competitive.

The new study stressed that the state’s economic boom from the 1950s through the 1980s was linked to high-quality, low-cost college and university education.

“Employers knew that California, through its higher education system, could be counted on to lead the world in both technologic and industrial innovation, as well as in the creation of a large, talented, and well-trained labor force. . . . To break this cycle is to court economic catastrophe,” said the study, prepared by a group called California’s Education Roundtable.

About 2 million students are enrolled in higher education in the state. Instead of closing programs, the state should plan for an additional 800,000 students over the next 12 years, Roundtable officials said.

Since 1984, state general funds for higher education declined from 15.5% of the overall budget to 11.4%. That was caused partly by the recession and partly by new restrictions on taxing and spending, such as Proposition 98, which guarantees elementary and secondary schools and community colleges a certain proportion of state monies.

Assemblyman Paul A. Woodruff (R-Moreno Valley) has proposed a June, 1994, ballot measure to extend Proposition 98 protection to UC and Cal State without cutting other schools’ funding.

Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz said that he was interested in Woodruff’s idea, but that he would prefer getting rid of all such spending restrictions.

“Right now, we are trapped between a dramatically locked-up budget or diminished revenues,” he said. “We either need protection or greater flexibility. We’re saying the current situation is untenable if the state wants to continue its historic social contract.”

Also attending the news conference were Father Paul L. Locatelli, president of Santa Clara University and chairman of the executive committee of the independent colleges group; Warren Fox, executive director of the Postsecondary Education Commission, a state agency that studies higher education issues, and Ernie Leach, deputy statewide chancellor of community colleges.