UCI Panels Recommend Program Cuts : Education: Two task forces also suggest reducing number of vice chancellors by half as part of unprecedented effort by the university to reduce spending.

IRVINE —  A pair of task forces at UC Irvine responded to an ongoing financial crisis Thursday by issuing a series of sweeping recommendations, including eliminating the university’s teacher credentialing, comparative culture and physical education programs and reducing the number of vice chancellors by half.

The recommendations were among dozens released Thursday by two separate campus task forces as part of an effort by the university to reduce spending. The crisis stems from the university’s loss of $35 million in permanent state funding since 1990.

Since then, university officials have made administrative cuts, used reserve funds, reduced salaries, offered early retirement and increased student fees.

But an additional $4 million must be cut from the 1994-95 budget, they said. So six months ago, the chancellor established two task forces--one dealing with academic issues, the other with non-academic issues--to begin deciding where the cuts will be made.

The two groups’ other recommendations include:

* Combining the department of Spanish with the independent programs in Chicano/Latino and Latin American studies;

* Privatizing the Graduate School of Management, allowing it to retain its present enrollment but requiring it to pay for future expansions through agreements with private enterprise;

* Contracting out some programs, such as student health services, which are now funded by student fees. Students would then have to pay for health services through student insurance plans or out of pocket.

* Reallocating some student fees to pay for such services as academic advising and tutoring, which now are underfunded.

*

The task force’s recommendation to eliminate the Department of Education specifically calls for the teacher credentialing program to be “transferred in a timely fashion to the California State University system,” which already credentials most of the state’s teachers.

“What they’re looking into (cutting) is areas where needs are served in other ways,” said Linda Granell, a university spokeswoman. “Certainly, there is extensive (teacher) credentialing” available at other universities.

“This is not something that would happen overnight,” Granell said, adding that the number of students enrolled in the program dwindled from 176 in 1990 to 138 in 1992. Should the recommendation be implemented, she said, all students at UCI now studying to become teachers would be allowed to complete the certification process.

The task force would also abolish the physical education department, which offers no degrees and attracts few students, the report says.

In addition, the report recommends reducing the number of vice chancellors from six to three.

University officials were quick to point out Thursday that the recommendations are only preliminary and will not be implemented until after a great deal of campus discussion.

From now until April 15, they said, all segments of the university community--faculty, staff, students and administrators--will be encouraged to discuss the recommendations and submit their responses in writing to a committee, which will collect and summarize them. Then, they said, the recommendations and responses will be forwarded to Chancellor Laurel Wilkening, who will decide which ones to accept.

While some of the recommendations could be implemented as early as this fall, the officials said others could take several years to implement.

“Our former assumptions of reasonably sustained growth and resources from the state to accommodate increasing numbers of students no longer apply,” said Spencer Olin, the university’s current dean of humanities who will soon become its acting executive vice chancellor.

“UCI confronts the painful dilemmas of choice, and this has led to the need to engage in a much more profound and fundamental reassessment of our future course than has characterized our behavior as a campus to date.”