UCLA Sports Cuts Are Latest in Painful Steps to Slash Costs : Education: Many students are stunned by the elimination of gymnastics and men’s swimming programs.

The announcement Wednesday that UCLA will eliminate varsity programs in men’s swimming and men’s and women’s gymnastics is only the latest step in a painful restructuring to slash costs in tough fiscal times.

In coming weeks, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young will meet with committee heads of the Faculty Senate to discuss the framework for $33 million in cuts across various academic programs, which will be announced in October.

UCLA has already proposed eliminating four costly graduate programs and significantly reducing a fifth, but that is expected to save only about $8 million, said Michael Granfield, vice chancellor for academic planning and budget.

Plans call for eliminating the social welfare, library science, architecture and urban planning, and public health schools. UCLA officials hope that most teaching and research in those schools could be retained and housed within a new School of Public Policy. A fifth school, nursing, would be significantly reduced.

Eliminating the three varsity sports programs will have no direct effect on this proposal or on UCLA’s need to slash millions more from its general budget.

Athletics are not funded with state money but with private donations and revenues from sales of tickets and TV broadcast rights.

“If the entire athletic department went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t help our other programs,” Granfield said. “The only parallel is that there is an urgency in the athletic department . . . to bring costs in line with revenues.”

Granfield said the program cuts to be announced later this fall will affect every academic department, although he added that some will be hit harder than others.

The decision to eliminate the three varsity sports programs after the 1993-94 school year was based on the recommendation of a task force set up in January to assess UCLA’s intercollegiate program, which is grappling with a $900,000 deficit. The task force estimated that continuing the programs would lead to a deficit of about $9 million by the end of the decade.

But the news hit many students hard, with some questioning the need to eliminate some sports programs.

“I was really really shocked; I thought they were joking around when they told me,” said Amy Thorne, 22, who just finished her fourth year on the varsity women’s gymnastics team.

“It just strikes me as odd that a prestigious university can be having so many financial problems all the time,” she said. “It puts their credibility on the line. You think you’re coming to a secure, stable atmosphere, and all of a sudden this comes up.”

In the past decade, UCLA has made numerous athletic staff and program cuts, including eliminating its badminton, crew, fencing and rugby teams.