Cutting 20 percent from the University of Arizona budget would be the equivalent of closing six colleges within the school, university officials said in a letter sent to Gov. Jan Brewer.
The governor recently asked government agencies to come up with plans for cutting 5, 10, 15 or 20 percent from their budgets as the state wrestles with an estimated $3 billion budget deficit.
"I think you can see that reductions of this magnitude will profoundly impact what we can provide at the university," said Stephen MacCarthy, vice president for external relations.
UA said $15 million in permanent cuts from this year that it covered with borrowed funds from auxiliary accounts is equivalent to laying off 300 people.
The Arizona Board of Regents, in a 30-page document, emphasizes the maintenance of effort provision in the federal stimulus funding package and the crippling effect additional state cuts would have on higher education.
Arizona would receive nearly $800 million from the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under the state fiscal stabilization portion of the bill.
The federal money does come with strings attached.
States get the money only if they agree to maintain education funding at 2006 levels.
It means that further budget cuts in excess of 8.6 percent could not be imposed on the university system without forfeiting the federal stimulus funding, reads the letter addressed to Eileen Klein, director of Brewer's Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting.
It is signed by regents president Fred Boice.
Brewer can request a waiver to the maintenance of effort requirement, but we implore her not to, Boice wrote.
Already UA has taken about $77 million in cuts from its original state allocation of about $443 million this year.
The cuts have led to the consolidation of four colleges into one megaunit and the loss, mostly through attrition, of about 600 jobs.
The entire system has taken nearly $200 million in cuts this year divided among the three universities and the regents office.
