Administrators and trustees of Cabrillo College are making contingency plans for next year’s budget without actually knowing how much money they will have. The problem, they say, is Gov. Jerry Brown’s current proposal to slash $400 million from the statewide community college budget. Cabrillo, which now has an operating budget of about $60 million, could lose as little as $4.2 million or as much as $10 million. In either case the college stands to face a deficit.
One option is to reduce the number of students, which now stands at 16,000. Between 1,274 and 3,465 students could be lost, depending on whether the state cuts funding by $400 million or more. In other words, the student body could be reduced anywhere from 8 to 21 percent.
At this point, administrators are preparing budgets for the 2011-2012 academic years based on what they anticipate to be the best, worst and mid-range scenarios. They have already agreed to raise tuition costs by $10 per credit, believing that this will bring in another $1.1 million in revenue, but admit that this will not be enough to cover real costs. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
