Among the midyear budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for the current fiscal year is an additional $65.5 million taken from the University of California.

The $65.5 million cut would come on top of the $48 million year-over-year reduction for UC that was included in the final 2008-09 budget.

That budget also left the university to achieve an additional $100 million in savings to cover student enrollment growth and increases in fixed costs that were not funded by the state.

The state’s per–student spending for education at UC, adjusted for inflation and enrollment growth, has fallen nearly 40 percent since 1990.

“We are of course disappointed to be facing another potential budget cut on top of the reductions we are already making this year,” said UC President Mark G. Yudof. “We believe higher education is crucial to California’s ability to grow its way out of this economic downturn, and we ultimately need to be talking about ways to improve investment in our state’s human capital.”

Yudof added that UC’s actions will be dependent on the budget actions ultimately approved by the legislature and the governor, and the Board of Regents will need to discuss these issues at their regular business meeting, which begins tomorrow in San Francisco.

At UC Santa Barbara, “The Coordinating Committee on Budget Strategy is revising budget reductions targets based on this most recent news,” said Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas. “As we have done in the past, we will seek information about how these budget reductions will affect the campus before finally assigning them.

“This most recent additional reduction will make the cut to UCSB for 2008-09 similar to the magnitude of the cuts we took in 2003-04 and in 2004-05.”

To address budget cuts already enacted, UC has reduced expenses at the Office of the President, and campuses have been asked to consider curtailing hiring, travel, consulting services, use of leased facilities, energy costs, and similar expenditures.

UC expects that deeper budget cuts would force campuses to turn to options such as hiring more lecturers and fewer ladder-rank faculty, offering fewer course selections and larger class sizes, reducing operating hours for libraries and student services, and paring back other academic and administrative programs.