The specter of further budget cuts is staring the higher education system in the face, and colleges and universities here say they are bracing for what's likely to come in the supplemental 2010 Washington state budget.

Community Colleges of Spokane expects it likely will have to cap enrollments and use some of its reserves, while Eastern Washington University already has announced plans to merge four colleges into two to reduce administrative costs and still might have to curb programs.

Overall, the dire state of the state's budget has colleges and universities scrambling for ways to save money without harming programs, says Gary Livingston, chancellor of Community Colleges of Spokane, which operates Spokane Community College, Spokane Falls Community College, and the Institute for Extended Learning.

"There's been a dramatic change in the landscape," Livingston says.

The community college district had been expecting a budget reduction of about $100,000 for next fiscal year, after severe cuts last year, given the Legislature's view at the time that the economy would be much better by now. Unfortunately, those projections haven't held true, and the district could face $5.2 million in projected cuts in its next fiscal year, which would be offset in part by a tuition hike approved last year. Still, even with the higher tuition, the district would have to shave $3.6 million from its 2010-2011 budget. Last year, after part of the staged tuition increase went into effect, cuts reduced the district's budget to about $5.8 million less than it had in its previous fiscal year, Livingston says.

Eastern Washington University, meanwhile, expects a similar crunch, says Rodolfo Arvalo, the school's president.

"Right off the bat, the governor's looking at reducing our budget by about $5.8 million dollars," Arvalo says of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire's January budget message. From what he gathers from discussions the school has had with the Legislature so far, "They don't seem to have any interest in mitigating that."

"We can't operate at the size we are in the face of that," he says. "We took a $26 million cut in this biennium already."

Alan Coelho, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at EWU, says he will return to teaching kinesiology and biomechanics next year, when that college is merged with the College of Arts and Letters. Coelho says that the change likely will be unnoticed by students, who identify with programs and departments but not so much with the administrative unit of a college. If there are further budget cuts, students will begin to feel the effects of the loss of funding, he says.

"If the budget cuts continue, the challenges are being able to offer the classes. That's where the students are going to feel it. Classes are going to be bigger and not offered as often," Coelho says.

If revenue isn't found to fund state need grants for low-income students, the effect for EWU could be an overall reduction of about $15 million for the 2010-2011 school year, he says.

Washington Gov. Gregoire left those grants out of her budget message in December, which must reflect revenue as projected at the time without further legislative action.

Gregoire said she couldn't live with that budget, which she was required to deliver.

In January, in a second budget message, Gregoire proposed restoring 60 percent of the state need grant funds, but even if that's done, significantly fewer students would be eligible for the aid because of the reduced amount of it, says Chio Flores, Washington State University's director of financial aid and scholarships. At WSU, 4,900 students have received $26 million in state need grant funds this year, says Flores.

Another aid program that is slated for suspension in the governor's January budget proposal is the state work-study program, Flores says. She says that though the amount of state funding that program provides to WSU is significantly less than the state need grant-just $1.6 million for WSU students this school year-the employers who hire those students, mostly campus departments, stand to lose that work force of about 800 student employees, for which the employers pay 25 cents for each dollar of work-study funding.

"They hold jobs from working in labs to various student departments, housing, and dining services. Most departments have built this in as a way to deliver these services," Flores says. Students often choose work-study jobs that are related to their fields of interest, enhancing their education.

At EWU, Arvalo says he wonders where the bottom is. He says the quality of the college experience will be put at risk if the pattern of cuts continues.

Such large cuts first begin to hurt programs that provide a richer experience for students, such as research programs, then can harm services for the community, he says.

For example, EWU's dental hygiene program offers free services to low-income community members, but might have to start charging for some of those services, Arvalo says. EWU already has closed its university press and eliminated some degree programs that had low enrollment.

Arvalo says that if significant cuts are made to student financial aid, there's a larger effect for the students and the university than losing the aid dollars.

"When a student comes to school, they aren't just bringing financial aid; they are bringing their own money," he says.

Livingston says there's a possibility that CCS will dip into its reserves in the short term to help offset some of its cuts. He hopes the school can keep most of its programs, though it eliminated a couple of small programs that had limited enrollment last year.

"I don't believe we will have program cuts, but we'll be capping some enrollments," Livingston says. Currently, the community college district is overenrolled, meaning it accepts more students than the state provides funding for, and tuition doesn't pay the school's full cost for each student.

Livingston says he doesn't think the cuts in this year's supplemental budget will be as "draconian" as what higher education endured last year, because with unemployment so high right now, the Legislature knows how important retraining of displaced workers is.

"I think they understand that we have so many people now who are unemployed," Livingston says.

The budget situation is desperate enough that the Legislature has inquired whether funds designated for capital projects might be available because contracts haven't been signed for those projects yet, Livingston says.

"One of our concerns is the potential of losing some of the money we already have," Livingston says.

He says he doesn't think that the Legislature will take back that money, and CCS already has its major capital projects under way, though it does have some repair projects it hasn't started yet. Still, Livingston says those sorts of questions illustrate the difficulty the Legislature faces in trying to find ways to save money.