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UNCG Chancellor Linda Brady has announced that her university will cut possibly 100 or more faculty and staff jobs. Similar moves should follow at N.C. A&T.

All told, UNCG is eliminating 275 class sections and 7,500 seats to defray $11.8 million in budget cuts. Even ivy-covered walls can't shield the state's colleges and universities from the cruel winds of a tough economy.

Hardly anyone is immune. The state's flagship campus, UNC-Chapel Hill, has seen both its fundraising and its endowment decline in recent months. Chancellor Holden Thorp said in a recent interview that his university expects to reduce faculty and staff.

The first jobs to go at A&T and UNCG will be part-timers -- who work on semester-to-semester or one-year contracts -- but who fill critical roles for many academic departments.

This will eliminate some class offerings and create the need for larger classes. That in turn could be costly academically. Larger lecture classes can be intimidating, especially to freshmen.

Even worse, the cancellation of some courses could force some students to remain enrolled longer until classes required for graduation are available. This should be avoided. It's not in anybody's best interests to delay a student's graduation -- and it appears neither to save the student nor the state much money.

UNC campuses have been told to plan for spending cuts between 3.5 and 7 percent. But UNC President Erskine Bowles and Gov. Bev Perdue have disagreed on how far the cuts will need to go.

Bowles described as "ludicrous" Perdue's suggestions that the UNC system could get by with eliminating just 73 jobs. Perdue responded that Bowles' words were unduly harsh.

But if the impending UNCG cuts are any indication, Bowles was right. The two have since mended fences. Perdue sent a budget specialist from her office to meet with Bowles.

Good. This problem calls more for a meeting of minds than a war of words.

What hardly anyone disagrees about is that this is going to be painful, given the importance of strong public universities to the state's economy.

To UNCG's credit, top administrators, starting with Chancellor Brady, have added teaching to their workloads. Brady, a noted expert in foreign affairs, will teach a course in international negotiation next school year. This sends a helpful message of shared sacrifice. But it also will have a tangible benefit: UNCG won't have to eliminate 18 sections of university studies, which helps freshmen and transfers adjust to college life. Provost David Perrin and other deans have stepped forward to fill the gap.

As for the bigger picture, higher education is crucial to the local and state economies. Surgical cuts would be preferable to wholesale ones, wherever possible.

There's a delicate balance between saving in the present and investing for the future.