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GREENSBORO — When students come back to UNCG and N.C. A&T in the fall, they may have trouble recognizing campuses transformed by steep state budget cuts. Fewer professors, larger classes and fewer course offerings may be inevitable.

“It’s going to be noticeable and it’s going to be painful,” said Reade Taylor, vice chancellor for business affairs at UNCG.

Taylor has been crunching numbers since Gov. Bev Perdue sent her budget proposal to the General Assembly earlier this week, calling for a cut of nearly $168 million from UNC’s appropriations.

He estimates that the spending cut at UNCG will come to between 6 and 7 percent — a budget cut of about $10 million.

The same cuts could affect A&T to the tune of more than $7 million.

The Senate and House will now develop their own budget proposals, which may or may not incorporate all of the governor’s recommendations. A final proposal will go back to the governor for her signature.

In December, all state agencies including the UNC system were asked to draw up plans for cutting 3, 5 and 7 percent of their budgets — 7 percent being what most then considered a worst-case scenario.

The UNC Board of Governors will meet today in Chapel Hill to review those scenarios.

To make the 7 percent reductions, UNCG has proposed:

•  The elimination of 109 positions, including 59 faculty.
•  The elimination of 275 class sections, nearly 7,500 classroom seats.
•  The elimination of 60 percent of freshman seminar classes, to be replaced by a large lecture series.

“Some of the departments have been keeping open positions vacant to avoid having to let more people go,” Taylor said. “But this is how our departments have said we’ll have to deal with these cuts.”

Michael Tuso, UNCG’s student body president, said students will feel the absence of laid-off professors.

“It’s something that’s going to impact every single student,” Tuso said.

“The incoming freshmen, especially, are going to find larger class sizes, a high student-to-professor ratio, and they’re going to be paying more in tuition.”

Tuso said he worries what that will mean for the reputation of the school, which The Princeton Review recently ranked as one of the best values in higher education.

The impact of coming cuts seemed less clear at A&T, where December’s 7 percent reduction plan calls for 66 positions to be eliminated, 42 of them from the faculty.

Akua Matherson, A&T’s assistant vice chancellor for budget and planning, said 45 of those positions are now vacant — but 21 are held by people who would be laid off.

Matheson said the school is doing everything it can to prevent that.

In a statement released late Tuesday, UNC President Erskine Bowles said he will work with the governor to solve budget problems, but hopes she’ll reconsider several points of her proposal. He said he was worried most by the fact that 92 percent of the cuts would be permanent.

“This, I think, may be the biggest problem in the proposed education budget,” Bowles said in the statement. “And if enacted, could result in the loss of hundreds of jobs across the University.”

Bowles said he appreciates the governor’s predicament and knows cuts will be necessary.

But he said he hopes she’ll also think of the future.

“I will also do all I can in this process to protect the academic core of the University, since our state’s and our people’s ability to compete successfully with the world’s best and brightest depend on our doing just that,” Bowles said.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com